I am getting into a 21 day fitness strategy! I am reading a Steve Siebold Fitness book and both he and an article I read recently in a periodical advise that it takes 21 to 30 days to replace an old bad habit with a new good one. Steve Siebold is a motivational writer who puts the focus on your thinking rather than on diet or exercise. He works with your will.
"Life is not wasted on me," is something I like to say in gratitude for the life that has been given to me. And because I enjoy life so much, I would like to live as long as I can as well as I can. My father lived to 89, on his own, with help from my sister MaryAnn in West Virginia. It is true the air quality is better there and the life is slower.
His mother, my grandmother Mabel, also lived to 89, but she too lived in a more healthful environment, Ocean City, NJ. Here I am in Camden County beneath the smoke stack of the trash to steam plant, and bordered by 42, 130, and 168 with all that exhaust poisoning the air, so I am at a disadvantage.
However, my mother's mother lived to be 89, and she lived in Philadelphia, but not in good health. Both grandmothers ended up in nursing homes for the last 2 years of their lives, not a welcome option no matter how nice the place may appear.
On the down side, my mother had her first heart attack at my age, and was dead 5 years later from a stroke, so depending on much a part genetics will play in my cardiovascular system, it's a crap shoot.
Nonetheless, I do what I can as long as I can. Frequently, I fall off the good lifestyle I have tried to keep for most of my adult life. I have smoked under stressful situations, but am not smoking now and have had long long periods with no smoking - my daughter's entire 18 years at home (to be a good example). For most of 45 years I have been predominantly a vegetarian. For a period while I was raising my daughter I ate chicken and tuna, being afraid to keep a diet when she was growing up, that was too far off the one I grew up with. And I walk every day and have for most of my adult life. My daughter is a vegetarian now too.
For most of the past 40 years, I have walked in the parks in Collingwood, and Audubon, and Haddon Heights. A part of my 21 day plan now, to correct for so many lost walking days due to weather excused laziness, I am doing two or three walks a day. Today I walked in Knight Park, where I walk everyday. And I added two loops at Haddon Heights Park, where the most gorgeous ground cover of butter yellow flowers was in bloom. It was a carpet of sunny cheer and optimism! I parked at the lot just across from the Dell, and walked the Dell loop, and the loop that ends with the cannons.
If you can at all get there while those yellow flowers are in bloom, you should. All of us walking there today, with our dogs or our earphones and fitness apps, were enchanted!
In case you are interested, I am also eating a banana a day, staying off coffee completely (for my heart) and eating a salad every day for one meal. And I am back at the gym, Planet Fitness in Brooklawn Shopping Center. It is very inexpensive and has all you could ask for (unless you want to swim, in which case you must go to Barrington Royal Courts which has a great salt water pool.)
Spring is a good time to get busy at getting fit! And the parks are a good option during tick season (right now).
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
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