I have not been on a bike since I was 15 years old!
But I went to Wal~Mart today and bought a bike! And a lock, and a padded seat cushion (of course!). It never occurred to me until a couple days ago (seriously) that I could actually do something like this. I mean, why not? There are bike trails all over the place up here and there's no reason on earth I can't ride a bike if I want to.
What kind of prompted this was, last week, it occurred to me, there's this wonderful pool at work that NOBODY uses, so why couldn't I start getting up early and swimming in it? All my bathing suits were either too large (5XL) or too small (14/16) so I went and bought the world's ugliest granny suit (solid black, with a little skirt - but that's all Target had in a 1 piece) and I started getting up at 5 AM, going into work, swimming for an hour, then taking a shower there and I'm at my desk before 7. It's AWESOME!!
The first couple days were ****. Everything hurt except my hair. Chest, back, shoulders, waist, and I could barely move my arms to type. But, I took some ibuprofen and powered through it, and now it feels great! It's peaceful and it's a great workout which doesn't hurt my feet, ankles or knees.
I made myself go to the gym 2008-2009 when I first started losing weight and honestly I hated it, and would use any excuse to get out of it. So I'd do it a while then stop. But I LOVE swimming! I didn't go Saturday morning because I stayed with a friend overnight out of town and I felt blah all day because I hadn't swum at dawn. Folks, I think this is something I can do every day for the rest of my life!
But, the swimming isn't doing much for my legs and lower body, so I decided, hey, why not buy an exercise bike? Then, after 5 minutes, I was like, hey, why not buy a REAL BIKE?! Then I don't have to deal with trying to get a heavy exercise bike upstairs so I can ignore it and hang clothes on it, because it's boring...I think riding a real bike might be fun! I know I loved doing it when I was a teenager, but stopped when I got my driver license, and really gained a lot of weight. Duh.
This all has really opened my eyes. Before, my real goal was just to be less fat. To be small enough to look OK in clothes and not really worry about being fit or thin. If I got to 199, I'd be perfectly happy. Well, I think I was selling myself short. There's no reason on earth I can't be THIN if I really want to. I think swimming, biking and my 2-day-a-week heavy weightlifting sessions may just do that!!
Stay tuned, I'll report back on the biking later.