Day 9: The Third Alternative

Nine days in and I am beat.  My legs feel like they are filled with lead, I didn’t sleep well the night before and basically I’m tired.  So tired.  There is also another problem.  One that has been growing since it rained all weekend.  It’s called grass and it’s getting tall. 

My dilemma: I don’t know if I have enough energy to run 2.5 miles and then spend 1.5 hours cutting my yard.  What to do?  Then it hits me like a TV rerun in the form of an old episode of The Biggest Loser, a show which I used to love to watch while I ate cookies, cake, ice cream, or cheese and cracker (that is no lie!)  I remember where they talked about finding alternative to standard exercises. 

These alternatives came in many different forms from hitting a tractor tire with a sledge hammer over and over again to moving furniture, cleaning your house, and yes even yard work. With the hour getting late and me getting more tired by the minute a decision had to be made and that is how, even though I am dying to road test my new shoes, mowing my grass became my exercise.  For those of you who think that I am cheating by claiming mowing the lawn is exercise I went online and check.  All the websites that allow you track the exercises you do include “Yard Word” or “Mowing, Push Mower” as an acceptable form of exercise. 

Even better one site had a calculator (sparkpeople.com) when I plugged my time spent “Mowing Lawn: Push, hand” it informed me that I had burned 475 calories.  More than when I jog.  It took me about 45 min. to mow my front yard alone.  No easy task considering its on a hill.  Now I don’t expect to use “Mowing Lawn: Push, hand” as an exercise that often. As things progress I expect to be able to run and mow the lawn as a bonus to exercising. 

Also, I would like to say, like you needed anymore proof on how out of shape I am, those 5 pushups, I can feel them in my back muscles and shoulders and they hurt. 

Kelly’s legs were bothering here as well especially since she had battled shin splints in the past so she mowed the back yard as her exercise.

Not glamorous but we got the job done, a work out and a good looking yard.  One last thing before I go today, I know I am going to have to do more than just run, in the days and months ahead I plan on exploring all different types of exercise.  I also plan on diving deeper into diets, check out some of the fad diets, and explore some of the diets I have been on in the past. 

There is a lot of ground that I will cover and it will take me awhile after all I didn’t get fat over night I built this body one delicious chocolate chip cookie at a time and that is how I will have to dismantle it. 

Daily Recap:

Matt – Mowing the Grass: 45 Min.

Kelly – Mowing the Grass: 35 Min.