As in, if I walked three miles yesterday, I must always walk at least three miles until I can walk further. If I do walk further, I must always walk that new distance until I can walk further than that. If I add weight lifting on my walking days off, I must always lift weights on days I don’t walk, no exceptions.

I am still dealing with overuse injuries caused by running 7 miles four times a week, no exceptions, even for respiratory illnesses. I stopped running more than two years ago, but started the elliptical to ‘pick up the slack.’

I still cannot manage to skip more than one day of planned movement (as I’m calling exercise now in a futile attempt to relax about it). I will go to great and damaging lengths to follow this rule, which is why I believe I must learn to break it. But maybe not this week.

I do have shoulds around exercise. My gym is near work, not near home. I should go every work day. I go 3-4 days/week. Over this long weekend I did get in some nice walks each day. Ok, two nice walks and one nice mow. The mow takes about as long as the walk so I count it as exercise.

I remember a local “health club” used to have an advertisement which included a line like: Since when is walking exercise? You’ve been walking since you were one!

I figure walking is exercise at least since hunter-gathers roamed the earth.

So there :-p

I’m still discovering my way, and trying to detach it from everyone else’s ’shoulds.’

I hope my way includes moderation–it’s more or less been an alien concept so far, at least with food. There are many things to untangle there, but I am moving slowly forward.

I’m also practicing modification with exercise right now, which today means trying not to freak because I don’t know if I will be able to walk or do a DVD tonight and I’m pretty sure tomorrow is out unless I pull the usual ‘getting up before I go to bed’ thing, which puts the hamster of obsession right back on the wheel. hence my new weekly goal.

When I do get the balance right, the ’should’ voices are easier to ignore. Most of the time. When I don’t, the Fat and Uglies are right there to force open the doubts.

I had to get out of the diet mentality. It’s a killer. I hate failing and I always failed on diets. I’m not on a diet today. I have a new way of eating. Yes, my way has firm boundaries. There are foods I don’t eat, ever. Birthday cake? No. Ice Cream? No. Pretzels? No thanks. This doesn’t make me bad. This doesn’t make these foods bad. They’re just not my food. If I was allergic to peanuts, I wouldn’t eat peanut butter. My body and mind react badly to foods with sugar and wheat flour. It’s not my fault. It just “is”.

Not everybody is like me. Some people can eat cake in moderation. I had 46 years of proof that I could not. Today, I don’t miss it at all. Go figure. It’s more fun being a healthy weight and not obsessing about food than it ever was sharing cake at a party.

My experience was that when someone asked me why I wasn’t eating something, it opened a door I love to walk though: My story of recovery from compulsive eating. I seldom hide the fact that I was over 300 pounds. I love to see people’s jaws drop.

Have fun!