3 Fat Chicks on a Diet Weight Loss Community - Well, Gotta Run! Anybody Walking-2-Run?

My insurance has these free "wellness" lectures....so I went to this "walking to run" thing, the lady who gave it (her name is Wendy Wood and she's a weight loss coach here in L.A.) was SOOO inspiring! She only started running in her 40s so it gave me a lot of hope. I'm 47 and have never run for exercise before!

Anyhow she's one of these women, she's got a bunch of kids in college and she's SO amazingly fit!

Anyhow here's the drill: You have a flat route (mine is the local community college track - I like a more picturesque walk but you need somewhere you don't have to stop all the time)

Then when you first start out -- well it's according to your level, in my case, I can walk 10 times around the track, 2 miles, without stopping so my goal is to go from walking the 2 miles to running it.

So starting out very slowly -- I'm walking 3 laps, running/walking in intervals the middle 4 laps, walking the last 3.

So the goal is, you increase the running intervals SLOWLY in the middle over time until you run the whole middle 3 laps. Like, you go from running half a length of track just adding one more fence partition, that type of increase, very gradual.

Then you increase the running intervals from 4 to 5, etc. The end goal is to run the better part of 2 miles without stopping, but you have to give yourself a few months to do it if you're just starting out.

This woman gets up at 5 a.m. 5 days a week to run in any weather - but boy she's a walking (running) monument to that practice, she has the muscle tone and energy of somebody half her age.

She says to approach running like it's a blind date -- give it your best and get to know it, and you might fall in love with it, and if you fall in love with running you can pretty much say goodbye to weight problems, since you can't overeat and maintain an active running schedule at the same time.

Well, gotta run!