I Like to Move It, Move It

Today’s foods:

Today’s food choices, from upper right: mini turkey sausage and egg omelet; chili (what you see is what was left over); 40 cloves of garlic turkey breast (I ate this for lunch and dinner); Sargento reduced fat cheese stick; DaBecca maple honey uncured ham; multivitamin and calcium supplements x2.

Today was another really good day.

I took another walk during my afternoon planning period today.  I made the circuit a little bit longer today, winding through one of the wings at school.  I work in a school building that is just shy of 1 million square feet that has multiple wings that come off of it.  There is plenty of space to go walking around in there, so today I walked the main hallway upstairs, and then walked to the Career and Technology Ed wing and wound my way through that part of the building because I’d never been there before.  It is a newer part of our school, and I’d never had occasion to go down that way.

I’m enjoying taking these little walks for a couple of reasons:

• I am getting to see parts of my school that I’ve never seen.  The sad thing is that I’ve worked at my school for 11 years now and there are parts I have yet to see.
• The solitude is nice.  Taking the walk gives me a chance to clear my head and think without the distraction of students or work that must be done immediately.  I like having this “me time” during the work day.  I feel more productive once I get back to my desk in the afternoons.

I am noticing that I get around much easier than I did before surgery, and that I am having an easier time getting up and down the stairs as well.  We had a fire drill this morning and when we came back into the building, instead of going to the elevator to get back to my classroom, I decided to hell with that, I’ll just take the stairs, so I did.

There are two flights of stairs to my classroom of 17 steps apiece.  I climbed them with no problems, and once I got to the top floor, I noticed I wasn’t completely winded and that my heart wasn’t pounding out of my chest.  Yay me!

I’ve decided to revise my exercise plan slightly.  I’ll take a walk each school day in my building–it’s convenient, it’s air conditioned, and it just feels good.  On the weekend days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), I’ll hit the gym for a minimum of 30 minutes each time at first for a mixture of cardio and strength training.  For the next month, I’m going to aim for 7,000 steps daily.  After that, I’m going to increase my step count each month by 1,000 until I get to 10,000 steps (5 miles) daily.

I think they’re good goals to have, no?  And any activity I can get in is good activity.  I am thinking that in November, when my university has Homecoming, I might participate in the Fun Run/5K that is held as a fundraiser for a scholarship that honors one of our alumni.  I won’t be ready for a 5K, but I think I will certainly be able to do the one-mile Fun Run at a fast walking clip.  Perhaps I should make that a goal of mine:  to participate in the Jameson 5K/Fun Run in November.  Being the planner that I am, this might not be a bad thing to aim for.

Onward to tomorrow, and 7000 more steps!