Feel the (Fat)Burn

In my last entry I wrote that I missed running. I did, to a point; I guess more than anything, I missed *moving*. Being active, feeling good and not like an asthmatic 90-year-old.

So I got back on the treadmill. And immediately hated running again. It's just my nature: miss something, get nostalgic, take it up again and realize I stopped for a reason. Kind of like that time I thought I could wear jelly shoes in high school when they came back in the mid 90s. Yeah, not so much.

Anyway, my realization about hating running did not deter me from trying new things on the treadmill - mostly, the Fatburn program. In addition to the hopeful-sounding goal of the program, I'm enjoying the challenge of walking fast enough that I could run, but have to walk because my incline is at 6 or 7. I've even worked in a bit of jogging into the routine. Leg muscles I didn't know I had are sore after doing this program; overall this feels harder than jogging/running on a 1 incline, but I enjoy it so much more. Leave it to me to like something more difficult. That's also my nature.

The lesson learned? Branch out; don't feel like you have to subscribe to an exercise or plan because everyone says that's the fastest way to reach your goal. For the longest time I pushed myself to run because I thought that's what I had to do to make progress. Turns out it's a lot more effective to do what I enjoy and I'm more likely to stick with it. Why has it taken all these years for me to realize this?? I'm a little stubborn sometimes.

This realization has kick-started a movement for me in pursuing other goals as well - I'm more willing to look at alternatives to accomplish what I want rather than hold on to a notion of how I'm "supposed" to do things. It's quite freeing (and scary and kind of stressful, but I'll go with "freeing" for now).