I was talking to a friend of mine today. She called to check up on me because I kind of disappeared yesterday. I was taking it very easy because of the headache and the tiredness and after talking to Mom I just finished up a couple episodes of Smallville (remind me to wax poetic about that series, will ya?) and went straight to bed – did not pass go, did not collect $200.
I’d had a good morning … I was up a few minutes before my alarm and feeling pretty good considering. I got into my walking clothes, donned my weights, slipped on my ipod and headed out. Humidity was relatively low, and so I was able to manage a brisk walk. At first, my chest felt like I might not be able to make the whole 2 blocks, but I pushed myself knowing I could do it and WOULD do it. To cut a long story short, I did damned well considering I’ve been either passed out or headachy for about 4 days straight.
And so my friend and I are talking about hypertension, and the causes .. medications, history of hypertension and the negroid race … and then we branch off into exercise and heart rates.
Despite having been walking with a 1lb weight at each wrist and a 5lb weight on each ankle since I started walking, I wasn’t quite sure I was doing the right thing. She suggest that distance would be better for me to start. Well, since I know I can’t do distance, I didn’t think it made much of a difference whether I had the weights on or not. In fact, since I know I can’t do distance, the 2 blocks I CAN walk right now might work my lungs a little bit, but they would not work my arm or leg muscles.
Which kind of slung me down memory lane.
I was 12 years old when the doctor wrote me a permanent excuse from running PE (or PT) at school. “Cross-country” runs had me wheezing within the first 5 minutes of the run. Teachers were alarmed, Mom was scared and I was in pain. Whilst the doc could find no trace of asthma and since this phenomenon turned up during running, he forbade me to do long distance running from now until evermore. PE for me was reduced to field (long jump, etc), swimming and games (netball, etc). A year later I gave them all up because even though I wasn’t wheezing, my chest was still quite uncomfortable and besides, what was a 80lb weakling like me going to do with exercise anyway? It’s not like I needed to lose weight.
I got lazier over the years – spoilt by my perfect metabolism. I’d eat and eat and eat and eat and not put on any extra pounds; but if I got sick and stopped eating – boom – there goes the last 10lbs I worked HARD to put back on after the last bout of non-eating. When I hit college, after being there a good year, I finally hit the 100lb mark and celebrated in fine style with alcohol and cigarettes. 
It wasn’t until I hit my late 20s that I noticed that things started to change. And now … well, now all I have to do is LOOK at an oreo cookie and BOOM there’s an extra 2lbs on my face. Just like that.
There are many reasons for this – my body has never been used to being active, in Jamaica I sweated like a pig every day all day, the food there is FAR healthier, I moved around more being that I worked outside the home. It was the move to the United States that caused the sudden growth spurt. I kid you now, I gained 30lbs in about a 3 month stretch and that was during the first winter months up here.
So here I am trying to teach my body how to be active and exercise. It’s going to be a long uphill battle, but I am stoked. I am going to get fit if it KILLS me. Hopefully, I’ll even get to a point where I can run a mile or 2 instead of pathetically walking 2 residential blocks. 
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