Showing posts with label exercise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exercise. Show all posts

Monday, August 17, 2020

Mad Dogs, Englishmen and Me -- Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #Exercise #Dieting

 Tangled Dreams (Moon Child Book 7)


Mad Dogs, Englishmen and Me

Everyone probably knows the rest of that quote. Why me, you ask. It happened about a week ago. In the last eight months I’ve lost fifteen pounds. Well for the past two, I have remained at the same level. I would like to lose a bit more. What to do? The only way to achieve this is to exercise and walk.
Walk to me is boring. But I know I must. Now they say the early bird… You know the rest. I am not a morning oerson. I am awake and my brain works but my body refuses to exercise at that time. I spend the hours from seven AM until around twp PM convincing my self “I can do that.” Therefore, I have cone to grips with the midday sun. But I set forth, increasing the distance every day. My goal is to reach the hook and that’s three miles from my house. I figure in a year or two I will reach that goal. Then the problem will be walking back.
One good thing about doing this walk is I can think about my WIP. That is moving forward. Since the first of July, I’ve planned and now have about finished the rough draft. The total will be 40,000 words and I write tight in the beginning. I figure when I’m finished the book will be somewhere between 50,000 and 90,000 words. So every day, I hit the pavement while the midday sun is high and push myself another hundred steps forward.

My Places

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Wednesday, February 19, 2020

The Treadmill is my Enemy by Stuart R. West

Great to read while on the treadmill!
I hate the treadmill. Yet I try and get on it three to four times a week. Obviously I must be some sort of masochist, because, honestly, how else do you explain how something so horrendous is supposed to be good for you? Pure agony.

Whoever said exercise is good for you is a huge liar.
Every morning I wake up, knowing I should exercise. "Just five more minutes," I tell myself. It's particularly hard to rouse on those dark Winter and Fall mornings when the only ones up are insomniac serial killers and vampires. Yet, eventually, I get up.

You know, the magical number of "50" is usually a milestone to be celebrated. The human body, on the other hand, has very different ideas. If there's a party being thrown, it's purely a pity party, the body mocking its host all the way to the grave. It's like one of those charts detailing the state of our economy; the one with the arrow plummeting down into the red zone.

Anyway, after twenty to thirty minutes on the "monster machine," I'm done. And it's not pretty. Buckets of sweat roll off me. I look like a wet T-shirt contest reject (doubtful I'd garner any votes, but you get my drift--just, um, stay downwind because I smell like canned spam). My heart is galloping to burst through its cage. I'm leaning over the cursed machine, panting, hyperventilating like a pneumatic air compressor. My back hurts. And my knees! Oh, my knees! When I walk, they emit an unhealthy squelching gelatinous sound. I swear it sounds like aliens replaced my kneecaps in the middle of the night with fish bowls.

The worst part? After all this torture, the treadmill's electronic face taunts me, registering joy that I've burned off a mere 100 calories. 100 lousy calories. If I were to eat half of a small donut, I'd break even. Any more food over the day, though, puts me back over the top. The demonic treadmill is laughing at me

You know, there's gotta' be a more pleasant method of exercising. Maybe I'll try yoga. Now...where's that leotard?
I imagine the character Zach loooooves the treadmill!

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Writers need exercise - by Vijaya Schartz

Sitting at a keyboard all day, every day, is not conducive to inspiration or good health. Unfortunately, writers tend to just sit and type, so engrossed in their stories that they forget there is a world around them. Unaware of time constraints (except for deadlines) they remain sedentary. Even when they do not write, they are still sitting, promoting on social media, writing blogs.

Sometimes it's difficult to find the time or even the energy to move or go outside. We all know we should exercise, but we find excuses, mostly valid and logical ones, for postponing and procrastinating. One day, I will exercise. When this book is finished... when I'm done with this series...

There was a time in my life when I traveled a lot, exercised a lot, climbed mountains, jumped out of planes, surfed, practiced Martial Arts. Of course, I was not published at the time and had no deadlines, or obligations. I enjoyed accumulating the experiences that now enrich my writing.

For me, it has been over a decade since I practiced any physical activity on a regular basis. So, this fall, I decided to break out of my funk and take care of my body. Nothing drastic, nothing extreme. I was looking for regularity, something I could stick to. Something with buddy support. Two writer friends recently started Tai-Chi classes near my residence, and I joined their class. One of them goes hiking on Sundays, and I decided to join her as well. Yes, it's the right season for hiking, since I live near Phoenix, in Arizona.

I also had to establish a writing schedule around these activities, to make sure my writing would not suffer. I quickly discovered that having a regular schedule encouraged me to write faster. I write mornings, while my mind is fresh and agile, and it's my first priority of the day. Then I exercise, promote, and fulfill my other obligations as a writer.

Since I started exercising again, I discovered that I am more prolific, and inspiration comes easier. I'm glad I established this routine. I already feel better, stronger, younger, more energetic, and I love my life. So, this January, stop making excuses, and start taking care of yourself. You will like living healthy.

And as a reward for reading this, PRINCESS OF BRETAGNE, Book 1 in the Curse of the Lost Isle medieval fantasy romance series, is free in kindle through today. If you like immortal strong women, the Viking invasions, or Celtic legends, don't miss it.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007K1EGAM

And this series will be complete with the release of Book 8, Angel of Lusignan, in January. That book is already in pre-order at Amazon HERE

Check out the entire series on its new page on Amazon HERE

Vijaya Schartz
 Blasters, Swords, Romance with a Kick
 http://www.vijayaschartz.com
 Amazon - Barnes & Noble- Facebook



Thursday, June 23, 2016

The Weight of Words by Victoria Chatham




Coming Soon!



All authors know that writing can be a lonely occupation. They also know that sitting for hours with a computer is not good for them. It’s easy to get lost in the flow of writing. The upside is – the book gets finished. The downside? All that sitting may add a few extra pounds. It is so easy to forget about taking the exercise we all need in favor of just adding a few more words to the work-in-progress, and those words can weigh heavy.

I have a love hate relationship with weight. Photographs show that I was a child of average build and size, but all that changed when I was eight years old and had a three month long bout with pneumonia with much of that time being spent in bed.

I apparently did not have much of an appetite and the doctor advised my mother to not worry about what I ate as long as I drank plenty of milk which, in the early 1950s, was whole milk. Consequently, by the time I got out of bed, I was almost as round as I was high and so began my life long battle with weight.

It didn’t seem to matter what I ate, there was the potential for another inch on my hips. Through my teens I managed to keep a regular weight with numerous activities – horse riding, swimming, badminton, archery and good old rock ‘n roll.

As a Mom with a young family, I burnt a lot of energy keeping up with my three kids. Then I experienced a complete metabolic flip-flop when, after a divorce, my weight plummeted. Family and friends encouraged me to eat – and I did. Anything, at anytime, anywhere. It made no difference. At my lowest weight I was 87lbs and it took me two years to regain a somewhere-near right for my then age, height and build of about 120lbs. Once I reached that weight, I maintained it for several years but it was a constant balancing act.

I lost weight again, naturally enough I suppose, when I immigrated to Canada. My husband was a true blue, dyed in the wool steak and potatoes loving Canadian but he was also a man who loved to cook. How could I refuse to eat a meal so lovingly and carefully prepared for me? From chicken wings (I’d give you the family marinade and sauce recipes but my DH would probably come back to haunt me if I did) to planked salmon, chili and sea food dishes, he tried it all. If he didn’t cook at home, there were a variety of restaurants to be enjoyed. 

And life was changing. We became so busy that what we were doing was more important than what we were eating so, you guessed right, I started putting weight on again. Breakfast was about the only meal we ate at home. Dash here, grab pizza on the way. Dash there, oh we’ll just pick up coffee and donuts.  Then there were the days when we didn’t make time to eat until the evening by which time we could have consumed half a cow because we were so hungry.

Everything changes, and life changed again when my husband passed away. Being a consummate shopper, he did the shopping for what groceries we did have at home. Faced with not much more than an echo in my fridge, I had to start taking care of myself again and I reverted to what the cashier in my local grocery store laughingly referred to as ‘English shopping’. I bought fresh produce on a day to day basis which is almost anathema to the average Canadian shopper.  I started eating more meals at home, boring and time consuming though preparing food for one person was. I’ve never been fond of frozen meals, and could easily live without a microwave, so my meals at home were mostly salads.

Now being more mature than I’ve ever been, in years anyway, it really does matter what I eat. Over the years I’ve weathered the various theories that have been touted around. You know- the ones like apples-are-bad-for-tooth-enamel versus eat-an-apple-before-each-meal, coffee-is-bad-for-you then one-cup-in-
the-morning-is-fine. It all boils down to eating sensibly. A little of everything does you good as my grandmother used to say, with the emphasis on ‘little’.

And where, these days, do you find ‘little’ of anything? Supersize this or that, MSG-laden pre-packaged food products and the question about a bag of chips, ‘Can you eat just one?’ I have discovered for myself the truth nutrition gurus have been telling us for a long time – diets don’t work. Diet programs are great for initially losing weight, but how many people actually learn the lesson of smaller portions of the right foods aligned with exercise? Many don’t so, when they stop the program, the weight piles back on.

So where am I on a scale of 1-10? I must be honest. I’m pretty low on the totem pole actually. I know I could and should pay more attention to my diet. I know I could and should take more exercise than my walking and yoga. With each book I start I plan to take my exercise first thing in the morning to get it out of the way, but my characters have a siren song and I often find myself sliding out of bed into a housecoat and sitting down at the computer to get to grips with them. The walk can wait until later in the day, the yoga stretches I’ll do in a minute.

I’m starting another book now. I have a schedule up on my white board of how each day Monday to Friday is going to be. By the time I finish this one I hope to have lost the few pounds I put on with the last one. Come December I’ll let you know how I did.






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