What do you do? I'm always curious about what moves people.

Here's my exercise story -- 

(Written 11/14/2014)
A few years before surgery, I started trying to make exercise a part of my life. I went to the gym and used the elliptical about 3 times a week. But then I'd stop. And then I'd get back. And I wasn't very reliable. Sometimes I'd try to lift weights but I never enjoyed it.

Then came surgery. I knew that if I was going to change my life, I was going to go all the way. I truly believe that exercise does extremely little for weight loss, but I know that it has many benefits to overall health. I didn't just want the weight loss, I wanted everything. I want to be healthy and strong and to be able to do everything.

Surgery was March 2014. I was only allowed to walk for the first 6 weeks. No elliptical, no running, no lifting, nothing except walking. I started walking in the hospital by doing laps of the wing I was in. When I got home, I started doing laps of my street. Each lap was about a quarter of a mile. I bundled up since it's cold here in March! Once I could do a mile, I switched to the gym and started walking on the treadmill.

On the treadmill, I started at 2mph, 1% incline, and 35 minutes. I went three days a week and increased my time by 5 minutes each time until I could do an hour. Once I could do an hour, I started increasing my speed, .1mph at a time. I kept doing this, .1mph at a time, until I was close to 4mph (3.8) and then I tried running. And I could do it! (I was past the 6 week mark at this point.)

From there, I started to work on intervals. I would run 45 seconds out of each 5 minute block. Then I increased it to a minute, and so on and so forth. Eventually I switched to Couch to 5k to follow those intervals. In June 2014, I signed up for my first 5k and made that my goal. I wasn't super thrilled with this, though so...

One weekend, when I was visiting my parents to help them out, I tried running outside. I switched to the Zombies Run 5k Training plan, and I ran outside. This was in August 2014. It was an epiphany. A revelation. It was amazing and I was hooked. I haven't been back to the treadmill since. I know I'll have to eventually once there's snow and/or ice on the ground, but I'm loving the outside now.

I ran my first 5k in October 2014. The course time limit was 60 minutes, so my goal was to complete within the limit and to not die. I was victorious and my time was 54 minutes and some seconds! I was (and still am) stupidly proud of myself for this.

So that's the running side of things. Now there's the fitness class side of things.

In April 2014 or so, I asked my best friend if she wanted to do any fitness classes with me and she told me about the fitness class passport that the local community college offers. I looked into it and was sold. It's one price and you can do all the classes you want, so it seemed like a good deal for someone like me who can devote a lot of time during the day to fitness stuff. (A lot of the other local options only have evening classes which do not fit into my life at all.)

I started off with yoga (2 classes), pilates (3 classes), and tai chi (1 class). I had studied yoga and tai chi in the past - I loved tai chi and didn't really get yoga. Pilates seemed like something that was interesting. I promised myself that I would stick with everything for a month, since I know it takes time to make something a habit and to really figure out if you like it. I ended up dropping two of the pilates classes since the teacher was a nut and I couldn't deal with her. I love pilates with my other teacher, though!

I maintained that for the summer term and, in the fall term (September 2014), I lost one of my yoga classes (but gained another one in November 2014) and added zumba (like), water aerobics (it's fine, and I like being in the pool), and bhangra (again, bad teacher).

I've also added a lot of yoga into my home exercising. I do a long program one day a week and then I do about 30 minutes of yoga for stretching after my running which is still three days a week.

All of this boils down to finding what worked for me and making sure to really give things a fair chance. The best exercise is the one that you'll do and any other exercise doesn't matter. And I think that the exercise you'll actually do is the exercise that you enjoy. With the caveat that sometimes you've got to force yourself in the beginning.

I do believe that the variety of exercise I'm going has helped me prevent injury and I like to think that, throughout the course of a week, I'm exercising every single muscle in my body that can be exercised :D

And that's my exercise story up until this point! Right now, I'm training for my second 5k, which is a day after my year surgeriversary. I'm doing about 14 hours of exercise a week and I'm feeling pretty fantastic. I feel strong and invincible.

(Updated 3/14/2015)

It's a few months after I initially wrote this and I've changed things up.  I'm only doing yoga, tai chi, and pilates classes now due to the zumba class being cancelled.  I have added Fitstar which is a fitness app and that's going well although I haven't had a lot of time recently due to my dad's surgery. 

I also ended up doing an unexpected 5k in February, so the race I mentioned as my second race was actually my third.  I've also switched to using training plans on Runkeeper.  

I'm going to start training Aikido in May once choir breaks for the summer.