It can be a struggle to get through the second half of the day.
Many businesses have fitness competitions, walking groups, and incentive programs. What happens to these when you work from home? Now that you can’t spend that federally mandated fifteen minute break climbing the stairs in your building how do you make the most of it? A short exercise break can be as invigorating as that mid morning coffee. Don’t stop moving just because Karen from the next cubicle isn’t shaming you into laps around the office. I love yoga, and walking. How are you staying Healthy At Home?
…well, my first thought was more along the lines of “am I healthy at home?”…so I guess thank you for the vote of confidence?
…all other things being equal I think I’d take Tai Chi over yoga, myself…although I guess it does require a bit more space than one of those mats if you make it through a whole form…& the whole pushing-hands thing is kind of verboten with things being as they are…
either way, I guess mostly it’s been the walking thing for me lately…despite everything it still seems wrong to stay indoors all day?
I was thinking of trying a Tai Chi class before the apocalypse hit. But it was at the same time as one of my yoga classes. Did you know that Josh Waitzkin, the subject of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, became a world champion at Taiji Push Hands? And coached two other people to world titles. Freakin’ over achiever!
…I did not know that…but I’m kind of impressed
…& if you can find the time to give it a go I probably would…haven’t made it to a class myself in a fair while but I liked it better when I did?
I do yoga at home but, I prefer going to class so my teacher can correct mistakes I might be making, or push me to challenge myself. She’s going to try doing them by Zoom in June. We’ll see how that goes.
I did yoga, once upon a time, and I’d like to get back to it…but the cost of signing up is way more than I can justify at this point.
There are some good free lessons on YouTube. Do Yoga With Me and Yoga with Adriene. Not as good as an in person class but pretty good. And you and Mrs. Butcher could do it together.
It’s very good for PTSD, we hold trauma in our bodies.
Thank you, I’ll check those out.
My mom really loved Tai Chi. She was always amazingly loose with no streching at all, but she found Tai Chi really good for her anxiety, and also of course as she got older for her balance.
I always thought it looked beautiful, so graceful. If it’s ever safe to go to in person classes again I think I’ll try it.
Robin Williams used to call it “self defense for slow motion muggers.”
Walking, hiking, running.
I like walking but Fanny makes it difficult to get a good pace going. She hates when I do yoag, I have to put up a baby gate to keep her out of them room. She thinks I’m playing on the floor without her, lol.
YOGA, not yoag, lol.
Yeah my dogs are very anti exercise video. One barks at me the whole time and thte other just decides to climb all over me and put her mouth on my face (the latter dog is 16 and barely wants anything to do with us normally!).
That made me laugh!
I tried shutting the door when I do yoga but then she cries and scratches. When I put the baby gate up she just lays there sadly and watches.
This brought me a lot of joy. There’s something about a human on the floor, or even just engaging in unusual behaviors that is like candy to dogs.
Yeah I would be really interested in what instinct/psychological trigger they are experiencing. Is it me on the ground and they are worried about me? Or what? Haha.
The dog who puts her mouth on my is mosttly deaf and blind and puts her mouth on everything so it’s hard to figure out what she’s thinking. Like if you lean down to pet her she softly clamps your hand first haha.
Since my goober is a full-sized doggo, *and* we live an apartment,** I’ve been taking Lil out for “walkies” a few times a day. And with my grocery store job’s amount of walking, I’m not *too far* off of my pre-Covid amount of km walked (as counted by Pokemon Go😉).
Our shortest walks are circling our block, and usually the next block over. The longer walk takes us over by the lakes, and back up this way to home.
The shortest walk is ~1/3 mi., the middling one .4+ mi., and the good long one is a minimum of 1.1 at a time… so we’re walking a couple miles a day, on a slow day.
And when I’m at the grocery store, on Th-Sat, I’m usually walking around, lifting things, reaching, and climbing the step ladder for 7+ hours a night, so I get some decent exercise on *those* days.
The biggest issue I’ve had lately with trying to be healthy-ish, is that I’m almost constantly craving ALLTHECARBS. Figured it out a couple weeks back, when I realized that I’ve been drinking a good amount more of sugar-free/low sugar drinks and not as much water.
Been needing caffeine, so black-label Mountain Dew (Dew Zero?.. No Sugar? Whatever it’s called!) has been my bestie,since I don’t do coffee.
But it took me a few weeks of scarfing down chips, chocolate, and candy, before I caught on, that it was my body looking to replace the sugars it wasn’t getting, from those “sweetened-but-NOT-sweetened” drinks, and I wasted able to up my water intake and slow down on the blood-sugar spiking carbfest.
Annnnd I have a virtual appt with my endocrinologist today–three days after I accidentally washed my Libré sensor, so I’ve lost allll the sugars monitoring I’d gotten for the last few months🙃
(**and some of the folks who live in the courtyard-side apartments now are work-from-home-ing it *in* the courtyard alldayeveryday, with THEIR doggo on an extremely long lead….),
…I can see the appeal but claiming the courtyard for themselves every day sounds a bit much?
They’ve got one of the courtyard apartments, so they’re on their patio, evidently, but their doggo has a lead long enough to let it wander out into the rest of the courtyard…
And since Lil barks at pretty much *any* other dog nowadays, it’s simply not worth her going crazy.
She’s TOTALLY wagging her tail when she sees the other dogs, BUT she turns extremely quickly from friendly to resource-guarding, if that other dog gets between her and me.
So I’m just trying to keep her away from the other dogs now–especially since she’s 11 (and ‘cuz I can tell from the way that she has problems catching treats as we ride the elevator back up on bright, sunny days, that her vision is getting affected now that she’s older🙃).
She was always a vocal player, even as a weepup–so I GET that (especially since she’s jumping most of the time, and her tail is wagging like CRAZY) she really wants to play with the other dogs… but with her age, her lowered vision, and her tendency to resource-guard, I don’t trust that she can play safely anymore.
She’s AWESOME with people, and even kids!
But in dog-age, my peppy, prancy girl is totally a senior citizen (11 is a GOOD age for a lab–most of them around here don’t even make it to *her* age, it seems like, lately. I’ve known a couple folks whose labs made it to 12-13, but not that many, anymore–many often go down with cancers earlier than that around here, it seems like.)
…I guess I was imagining more of a communal space they were co-opting the way those folks who get up at dawn to claim sun loungers on holidays are technically within their rights but also…kind of being dicks about it?
…your version makes sense, though
We call it walkies too. Fanny likes to snuffle around a lot on walks. And she’s too big for me to make her move. When I had the corgi we walk 2 to 3 miles every day. Those short little legs could scoot!
At the beginning of the year my friend and I hired a personal trainer so we’ve still be doing that once a week via zoom.
My neighborhood does a socially distant workout in our courtyard twice a week with strength training and belly dancing. We learned how to swing kettlebells on Saturday and I’m still sore. And I do yoga on Sundays, which has also switched to zoom.
(Wow, that sounds like a lot, but it’s not, I promise.)
Ooh, belly dancing!
Napping.
I like a good nap myself.
I actually just woke up from one. It was glorious.
And stress baking for after napping.
Followed by stress eating! Or stress feeding others. 😏
…
uhh..well im still expected to work from work… so ive got a couple miles bike ride for my commute and then spend the day walking around the shop…sometimes i even work a bit
Coffee is essential so you going in to work makes sense.
no complaints here.. but as the gubment effectively shut bars restaurants and offices we’re kinda running out of customers needing a fancy show off coffee machine
still getting a lot of orders from finland tho… apparently nothing will get between a fin and coffee
I struggled with this when I first started working at home a few years ago. I started wearing a pedometer, not because I’m going to get to 10k steps or something but because I realized some days I would walk like…200. Haha. Now I am used to making sure I walk around throughout the day and don’t feel the need to count. Another thing that has been reeally helpful to me is taking frequent significant breaks and moving around during them.
For every 2 hours of work, I take a 30min-one hour break, and I set phone alarms to both put me on break and put me back to work. I do maybe 30 minutes of housework or walk the dog – something on my feet, veg and zone out for the rest of it, maybe 15-30 more minutes. I find that it has been tantamount to me maintaining healthy eating and movement habits for me to take these long breaks because fuck no I’m not going to put aside time to work out because I hate it. Haha. I never get super hungry because I’ll use the breaks to eat a responsible snack, and not do something weird when meal time comes.
It might seem like a lot of break time, but the total work day is longer (about 8am-7-8pm) and the fact I am doing my housework during those breaks – including dinner prep and stuff – means the amount of “lounge” time at the end of the day is pretty much the same. It just feels better to me, and keeps me on my feet, and keeps me from getting really drained.
It sounds like you’ve found a good balance.
I’m lucky on that front! Since Lil was the runt, she topped out at around 70lbs, so I *can* get her moving–it’s just a bit tough, if she really wants to smell something😉
But she’s pretty good (most of the time!)😆😂🤣
Sometimes, I think I’d kinda like a smaller doggo, for the next/someday pup. But I gotta admit, it’s REALLY nice to walk a big-ish black dog, when i go out walking at night…’Cuz since she’s a BBD, many/most folks usually give us plenty of space, and I feel safe being out with her even at 2-3 am (none of THEM know that she’d only lick them to death for some ear-scritches & butt-scratches😉😆🤣)
And in case anyone else doesn’t know about BBD (Big Black Dog) syndrome, here are some explainers:
http://www.tulsapetsmagazine.com/tag/bbd/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/canine-corner/201110/are-black-dogs-less-lovable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dog_syndrome