I’ve been telling you about my husband’s and my efforts to get the lard off and become more fit. We started in mid January, when my husband had a shortness-of-breath scare and we ended up in the ER. It turned out to be a reaction to his new blood pressure medication, but it really got our attention.
In June, we will celebrate our 43rd wedding anniversary. We dated 9 years before we married. 52 years together isn’t nearly enough!
We are committed to our new lifestyle of eating much healthier and moving more. We’ve been walking at the local park, taking the hiking trail, or walking what my husband calls, “The Geezer Trail” around the city. We take one of our dogs each day. I was really pathetic when we started. (We’ve been sedentary, doing computer work, for over 30 years, so walking every day really takes some effort. ) To date, my husband has lost 32 pounds. I’ve lost 26, plus 10.4 inches.
The biggest problem is the weather in Arkansas. Many days of the year are either too hot, too cold, too wet, too…. We joined the local gym, but my husband really doesn’t want to do that. In our years together, we’ve learned to DO WHAT WORKS and what we’ll stick with, so we started trying to figure out what ELSE we could do when the weather becomes too hot here.
We researched stair stepper machines and elliptical machines on the net. There is a wealth of good information, so we figured out that the elliptical machines would be better for ME, since I have arthritis issues in hips and knees. We looked in Craig’s List for local used elliptical machines, looking up each one listed so we could see a picture and get details.
We bought an E35 Elliptical Trainer yesterday. The man helped us get it into the back of our truck, thank goodness, since it weighs 200 pounds. We put a tarp over it and my husband tied it down carefully with straps and rope and we drove it carefully home. It took us about 20 minutes of hair pulling to figure out how to get it OUT of the truck without killing ourselves. A combination of my sitting in the truck hanging on one end while my husband guided the other end down some ‘folding ramps’ we purchased on the way over to see the elliptical machine.
We discovered that the machine was too LONG to go where we thought we were going to put it inside the house. We ended up putting it in the garage out of any possible weather problems. We have an extra long, extra wide garage, so this will be a good place for it. We put a nice fan on the shelf in front of the machine, though the machine itself has a small, built-in fan on the front. It also has a drink holder and plug ins for MP3 players or headphones!
I read the manual carefully, and it seems to be much smarter than I. :0(
I decided to simply push MANUAL and START and see what happened.
FIRST IMPRESSION:
I put in my age and weight and 10 minutes into it and began. I got tired after 2 minutes on the lowest setting. I made it to 5 minutes, and one round around the ‘track’ on the display. I decided to admit defeat for one day and will try it again tomorrow – thinking that maybe TWO sessions of 5 minutes tomorrow, depending on how sore I am.
My husband then tried it. It has settings for 2 Users, so we can each keep track of our progress without messing up the other! :0)
He, of course, set it to Level 5 and went at it like a maniac. He lasted 5 minutes, but was pretty winded and rubber-legged for a few minutes. We celebrated our first trial with a large glass of ice water on the porch.
We’ll report our progress from time to time, but we were both impressed that it will be a GOOD workout with lots of room for improvement. On good weather days, we’ll aim for a walk in one part of the day and a five-minute session on the elliptical. On bad weather days, two workouts a day.
Wish us luck?
