Let me clarify. I haven't exercised seven times this year; I have exercised the equivalent of seven DAYS!
At work, we have access to an online tracking tool that lets enter the type of exercise we do each day and the length of the exercise period. We can also download our history to see what we have done for the year.
I downloaded my tracking history this week and added up the number of minutes I have exercised this year. 10,080 minutes. That's 168 hours, or 7 days, of exercise. My number came out to exactly seven full days.
That's pretty amazing, IMO. Of the approximately 160 days we have lived this year, I have spent 7 of them exercising.
Another way to look at it, which may not be exact but is still interesting to me: let's say that I burned an average of 500 net calories per hour when I exercised. 500 calories/hour X 168 hours = 84,000 calories burned. If you divide by 3500 calories, you get the number 24. I may be wrong and maybe my approximations are way off, but that makes me think that about 24 pounds of my weight loss this year is attributable to exercise!
Even if you dispute these calculations, there is no way to dispute how much fitter I feel. I work in a building that is half a mile long, and I used to get so tired and my back would ache if I had to walk even half that distance. I would get sore, tired, and sweaty. It took a long time to walk, too. I always left my desk 10 minutes before my meeting so I could have time to stop along the way. Now the same walk to a meeting in a different part of the building takes five minutes. I absolutely fly down the hallway
I used to struggle to pick up the 14 lb containers of cat litter I would buy. Thanks to weight lifting, it is very easy to lift these containers. I have also consistently seen improvement in my cardio capability. I walked around my block for a few months before joining a gym, but when I got to the gym and started on the treadmill, I had to put the setting at 3.0 or 3.1 mph and an incline of 2.0-3.0. This past week, I did a 3.0 mph with an incline of 14 and mixed it up by dropping to an incline of 3.0 and 4.1 mph. 4.0 mph with no incline is easy now. Similar improvements on the elliptical.
Sorry for the long post. Didn't mean for it to be.
I have exercised seven days this year
