choices choices
tuesday, november 19, 2002


before i get into the meat of this entry, some updates to report: my jury duty got canceled, the page theft mentioned yesterday is gone, and the bug thing is done. everything i wanted over with is pretty much done. nice to have even small positives when things haven't been so positive of late. and this entry relates in some degree to positives, only in this case i'll be working on making my own, something i'm quite used to doing actually.

i remember back when i first started to lose weight what seems like 100s of ages ago choices were easy. there was aerobics, total body toning, and spot toning in the video department, weights, exercise machines, and the usual sports in the schools. a little later came step aerobics and a few other things. i actually enjoyed most of these simple choices ( well, as much as a non-exerciser can enjoy any kind of exercise), and i'd still like to get a step and step video/dvd program. i took that in college and really enjoyed it, a lot. and it can be very low impact, but hard work at the same time. i just have a bit to go before i'm actually capable of doing that kind of work now. i have bad, painful back and hip joints that would complain greatly if i pushed into something my body hasn't been built up into tolerating.

so this morning, before we took off so the place could be bug sprayed, i poked around amazon.com looking for some low impact aerobic and total body toning exercise dvd's. unfortunately, exercise is not that simple any more. now there's aerobics (and none were marked as low impact), yoga, belly dancing, tae-bo, pilates, and tai-chi. several of these claim to give aerobic workouts (and i've done belly dance before, so i can see it) while other do spot toning. only a few seemed to be total body.

i was completely lost.

when did exercise become such a complicated industry? what the heck is pilates? and with ever exercise video getting at least one low rating, how the heck can you tell what the heck to try? can't they bring back the plain and simple esquire total body series? please?

after sorting through the mess, i finally put a pilates and a tai-chi dvd on my wish list. now all i have to do is come up with the money . . . and hope i don't have to pick up too much equipment. with the pilates mat work, i figure i can use a blanket or two instead of an actual exercise mat, but dumbbells and such are out of the question at the moment. course, that doesn't just mean financially. i truly need to start off with no pressure. it's been a very long time since i've done something like this. but i know my health needs it. it might help me deal with those women issues that conflict with my anemia.

course, i could try walking. that's free . . . and very boring. and, in this neighborhood, very dangerous. the final price of being out and about might be quite a bit higher than a few dvds and some dumbbells.

i rather like living.