My weight has fluctuated my entire life. For most of my youth and early 20s, though, I was pretty healthy. When I had my daughter in my early 30s, I ended up getting preeclampsia, or high blood pressure and other symptoms during pregnancy. Nothing too bad happened, other than having to go on bed rest a week before I eventually went into labor.
As a side note, at the time, I naively thought that bed rest meant having a chill week, where I could just put my feet up and let my husband take care of everything. Actually, my doctor said I needed to actually stay in bed as much as physically possible. That meant reducing the times I got up to eat, shower, and even use the bathroom. I felt pretty terrible not doing anything at all hours on end. I ended up going into labor a few days later, so I only had to deal with bed rest for a short time, but it was certainly enough for me.
Even after giving birth, my blood pressure did not go back to normal, so my doctor ended up putting me on blood pressure medication. I wasn’t too surprised. My mom is Filipino, and high blood pressure ran on both her and my father’s side of the family.
With the stress of new motherhood, I ended up gaining quite a bit of weight as well. Since my mother also had diabetes, I thought I’d probably have a hard time escaping that fate as well. And I was right. My A1C levels were pretty high, and my doctor ended up putting me on Metformin. This was a wake up call for me, and I joined a weight loss program and started jogging and running everyday. My workouts started increasing to at least 60 minutes of jogging or walking each day and 20-30 minutes of yoga in the evening. I did eventually lose 60 pounds, but that level of activity was not really sustainable for me. I began stressing every time I missed even a single day of vigorous exercise. That kind of daily stress was the opposite of a happy life for me.
It’s been several years since that time, and I’m still down about 40 pounds. My workouts are now down to 20-30 minutes of walking during the week, with 10-20 minute jogs on the weekends. I try to do at least 5 minutes of stretching each day. In addition to that, I try to balance my meals with healthy fruits, vegetables, and whole grains while also giving myself space to have treats. And that has mostly been enough for me. Still, there was always that little thought at the back of my mind that I should be working out much harder and for much longer periods of time.
Imagine how happy I was to read that my reduced workload was still good enough in the recent article in The Washington Post, “Got 11 minutes? A daily brisk walk could lower risk for early death.” A recent study showed that, according to the article, “...even small amounts of exercise contribute to substantial improvements in longevity and can lower risks of developing or dying of heart disease and many types of cancer.” Of course, the study mentions the caveats, like the fact that your genes and income levels might have a large amount to do with the outcomes. Still, the study seemed to show that some movement was better than none at all.
And that was the best news I’d had all week. It validated my efforts to continue walking even if I wasn’t killing myself trying to fit in an hour of walking each day. That shortened time gave me a much higher chance for exercise success. My neighborhood is quite hilly, and living on the east coast meant that for several months each year, walking outside was treacherous. If I only had to find 11 minutes of walking sidewalk, I could certainly do that, rain, snow, or shine.
And so, here’s to 11 minutes to health and wellbeing!
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