How trying new (free) things was my stepping stone to weight loss.

November 8, 2016 Ashley 0 Comments

“Don’t like your workout? Try something new!”

Many a weight loss wizard will suggest this when you’re still trying to find your fitness path. Especially if you’ve already exhausted the local Equinox’s options (and subsequently discovered that sweating through reps and seconds on a stair climber just ain’t your thing). Don’t quit before you’ve begun, they’ll tell you. Hit up some kind’ve novel class you’ve never tried, instead. Try Barre. Or Bikram. Or Orange Theory. So, you give ’em all a go. But, by the end, when you finally find a fitness focus you like, you’re sort’ve bummed ’cause you’ve already piddled away that paper you wanted to put toward a membership on what you truly enjoy – everywhere else. And by the time you get paid again, you’ve lost interest and motivation. That’s why it’s just easier to not bother, right? ’cause it’s too much money? Or time? Or… whatever?

Wrong

’cause the solution to probing for new aerobic activities is far simpler than you’d think.

Youtube.

Yep. When I was first getting my back back in shape after herniating a disc, I couldn’t run. Even the elliptical was taxing. But, determined not to morph into an adipose sheathed amoeba creature, I was committed to fishing for something I could do. That’s when I came across these low impact workouts on Youtube. (Mind you, this was back in 2013 or 2014.) At first, looking at some of them, they seemed kinda dumb. A pile of planks? Dumb lunges? Campy dance moves? Punching at nothing? All performed by this hot, taut chick who looked nada like me? Despite all my layers of shade, I put ’em aside and gave this one eclectic exercise mashup a chance. And something dawned on me the moment it was done.

The first? That judging doesn’t burn calories. This definitely had.

The second?

Some of those moves were kinda… I dunno… fun.

I felt like I was doing something. Waking up parts of me that’d been in a coma. The butt and core work took some stress off my back and made me feel stronger. The punching and kicks extinguished a bit of that anger I’d had about the injustice of being injured. The dancing transformed my mood. Before long, I was branching out and finding more and more of those kinds’ve workout videos. And when those got easy, I’d level up. And when those got easy, I leveled up even more. Tara Stiles. At home Barre moves. That thing Gwyneth Paltrow swears by. Fast-forward to the termination of 2016 (AKA today) and I’m now not only doing the running I couldn’t do before, but I’m doing it on crazy trails and terrain. I’m not just jabbing at the atmosphere aimlessly, I’m training in MMA. I’m not only doing planks and lunges and core work, but I’m doing full out yoga poses I could never do even before my back went whack.

(Three years ago, I’d’ve lost weight just by laughing at you for a day straight had you said this’d be me in a few years.)

And as for the silly dancing?

Pshh. Start wigglin’ to Fitz ‘n the Tantrums or Pharrell and I dare you to not break a sweat.

Oh, and you want to know the grand tab total I racked up giving each and every one of those a try? Nada more than the same whatever-hundred dollars my comcast bill charges every month regardless of whether I do it or not. Because, luckily, we’ve all got this video site that’s a free service. And, in the time you spend bishing online about your bad day or sharing memes about how your two top hobbies are eating starchy carbs and carping about how starchy carbs make you corpulent, you could’ve been making those first steps toward finally finding your favorite new fitness addiction. So, get out there and try some free digital fitness on for size. And be open. ’cause, even if it’s not delivering awesomery automatically, it might just be the mental stepping stone that leads you to the things that are.

Because we all know that the weight loss we want is priceless.

But, with some willingness, it literally can be.