I’m more the work out in the home kind of person.

I borrow dvd’s from the library for power walking when I’m into it.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I wish I’d discovered ferocious exercise in my 30s. Where’s time travel when I need it?

Do the little things help? Maybe. But there’s also evidence that if you exercise only twice a week — say two good long walks — you are, unfortunately, starting at the bottom of the fitness hill each time…there is no cumulative effect. You will maintain your curent fitness level. But if you exercise harder, three times a week, you build muscle, which on your next exercise outing burns more fat, etc, etc. Essentially, you become an increasingly efficient calorie-burning machine.

And, weirdly, once you have the nice machine, you only want to feed it good food in small portions (sort of the way you take better care of the upholstery on a new car). I find it makes the eating part of my life surprisingly easy and guilt-free (for the first time since I was a teenager).

Ferocious exercise has got to be sexy and fun! Have you considered a roller derby team? (I’m so sad that I can’t do it, my knees are too old.) And Baptiste Power Yoga (an accessible type of Vinyasa yoga) looks great…there are studios in various places.
http://www.baronbaptiste.com/pages/affiliate.htm

Unfortunately, the program I’m in (which has a mix of young moms and 40- and 50-somethings, ranging in size from 120 pounds to 250 pounds, at all fitness levels) is unique. It’s run by my Seattle neighbor, fitness guru Susan Powter, who emphasizes modifying all the moves for your current fitness level. Susan is incredibly motivating and undeniably edgy. She’s experimenting with putting her exercise and diet stuff online (free with signup), which I think will work for folks who have already worked out with her. Whether someone could really “jump in” via the online stuff, I’m not sure…
http://www.susanpowtershow.com/

Karen

I struggle with healthy eating, and any kind of exercise so I give you a great deal of credit for taking care of yourself so well.

For years I walked every day, ate small, low-calorie and low-fat meals, and just couldn’t figure out why I slowly gained weight. It was only about a pound or two a year, but after 10 years — YUCK!

Exactly one year ago this week I joined an exercise program a friend recommended, and then I made the discovery that everything the magazines and doctors had told me about getting moderate exercise was misleading. Moderate exercise didn’t get me fit or help me lose weight; it just got me tired. To get fit, I needed to exercise three times a week, to the point of sweating, and I needed to do a variety of workouts (aerobics, resistance, etc.)

Fortunately, I found an extremely aggressive, movitating workout program run by a professional trainer that meets three days a week. I attend it without fail — even if friends are visiting, the weather is bad, I have a cold, I’ve pulled a muscle in my back or twisted my wrist, my mother-in-law wants to have everyone over to dinner that night, etc. etc. etc.

Results? After one year I’ve lost 30 pounds of really hideous fat, gained 15 pounds of muscle (for a net loss of 15 pounds) and went from wearing size 14 jeans to size 8.

You may gather this from my tone, but I’m extremely angry at all the “experts” who dished out the drivel about parking your car at the end of the mall parking lot and walking up and down stairs to get fit. My experience (at age 52) is that it takes hard work, professional coaching, sweat, and not being wimpy about injuries. (There will always be injuries.)

As Sally noted, signed up for a class really made the difference for me. To be blunt: My home life and my professional life are filled with things and people who care about what I’m doing for them, and could care less what I’m doing for me. To exercise, I have to get completely out of the house, into an exercise-focused environment with exercised-focused people.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I wish I’d known about this 20 years ago.

When I think of something away from my computer, I’ll often send myself an email from my cell phone. Same reason: I know I’ll be in front of my computer at some point!

It’s too bad Wordpress didn’t give me a warning that I made a mistake with the ads. Had a caught that I would have used blogger in the first place.

I’ve been working on affilate links so far.

I was actually also thinking of setting up a personal Wordpress blog and drip posts to be published at certain times during a day. I would then include an RSS feed on my gmail account, which I religiously check every 10 minutes. A roundabout way of doing things, but if it works, hey, why not.

Thanks for the tips. I’m usually pretty decent about time management — not the best, but I still get stuff done. Every once in a while, I try out another method of improving my habits — scheduling, keeping a time sheet, etc. Unfortunately, although I’ve stuck with all of them, they all lose their effectiveness after a while.

My challenge right now is that I’m trying to make time for a huge change in my life (my horse). Although I am starting to fall into a new daily schedule, it’s just not happening as quickly as I would like!

Glad we’re cool. One idea that has helped me balance items is, like Gina recommended, scheduling personal time as well as work time.

I did this when I coached my kids in sports (they no longer play) and for other items.

Franklin Planner has some good suggestions for this. It recommends ranking items A (must be done), B (would be good to be done) and C (will attempt to get to), then 1-xx within those categories. Then carry over from one day to the next. I try to keep such a schedule (not perfect) electronically because there are too many changes. Of course, there are those days I play fireman for my clients and fail to upgrade the calendar.