showed me how to strengthen the muscles and tissues around my knee so I could exercise vigorously, including running. I still do these exercises, and finally in 2016, under Kevin’s guidance, I added actual squats and lunges to my regimen. Both of these exercises are fundamental for strengthening the glutes, which is at this point also critical to achieving nearly all of my fitness goals.
So here is what I want to say about getting in shape.
We can’t accomplish anything until we (1) address and fix our issues, and (2) establish a meaningful fitness habit.
Over the past three years, I have rarely had a clear sense of when I needed to deal with an issue or put it aside, so I know this isn’t easy or simple. If my shoulder was bothering me, I skipped the pool and focused on running or cycling. If my knee felt wonky, I stopped running and was back in the pool.
In our everyday lives, this kind of working around problems is a good thing. We’re creative and flexible and we’re efficient at getting things done any way we can.
But in terms of our health and well-being, we need to figure out why our knees hurt and fix them. Sure, we may still need to work around them and bike instead of run, but at least we’ll know what it is we need to do and make a plan.
Because exercise is not optional.
You don’t need me to tell you that becoming fit in middle age is critical to preventing or at least putting off some of the most common serious medical diseases as we age, including Alzheimer’s and dementia, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and many types of cancer. These stories pop into our social media newsfeeds nearly every day.
As women, we talk a lot about what we want. We want to lose weight. We want more energy. We want better jobs. We want tighter skin. What we should be talking about, in the words of legendary coach Dan John, is what we need to do to achieve any of this.
For me that means that on a regular basis I’m finding myself in a room with a sports medicine specialist, as well as a physical therapist who understands my need and desire to be active. I’m continuing to learn about strength training from my trainers and also from Kevin, because he has me addressing and fixing my issues one by one.
The idea is that the better we get at exercising by addressing and fixing our issues, the more we’ll hate it less and ultimately begin to take real pleasure in the activity.
I began my fitness journey in earnest in 2014, and as I look back it occurs to me that my greatest achievement then was what I needed most: to develop a serious fitness habit.
Developing a habit was not what I wanted.
What I wanted was results.
If Reuel had said, “Actually, your goal is to develop a fitness habit,” I’m sure I would have been outta there.
Yet this idea is backed up by numerous scientific studies that point out that in order for exercise to matter, it needs to be frequent, intense, and vigorous.
According to a December 31, 2015, Washington Post Op Ed, “The Five Myths of Our Habits,” it takes an average of sixty-six days to form a new habit. While some simple behaviors may only need to be repeated for a few weeks in order for you to continue doing them without thinking about it, some, like exercise, can take a year.
A year.
A freakin’ year.
The author, Wendy Wood, a University of Southern California psychologist, suggested that setting a routine (what you do to get ready or prepare) may be even more critical to forming a habit than repetition (exercising). Even now, I plan out my week, incorporating my exercise and nutrition into my work schedule, I set out my workout clothes before I go to sleep, and I am out the door to run or train by 5:15 a.m. I don’t think about it. It’s like brushing my teeth, which is what I do after drinking coffee, not before—another mindless ritual.
By this point, I may be obsessed with my fitness routine, but like my coffee addiction, I’m good with that, because the benefits are worth it. I take true pleasure in the moments in my day when I’m moving around.
The point is to get set in a fitness habit and schedule your workouts in the same way you factor in anything else you need to do every day. What’s important, according to Wood, is that whatever we do, it needs to become routine. If you can only exercise three mornings per week, establish a routine for this until it becomes a habit.
And here’s where establishing a fitness habit gets so challenging, and possibly why many of us are setting the same fitness goals year after year.
What if you don’t enjoy exercising? Or what if you are like me when I started and so out of shape that exercising is physically and mentally uncomfortable?
My niece Nina Lish, an architecture student in Philadelphia, told me about a podcast she heard on “Freakonomics” with Katherine Milkman called “When Willpower Isn’t Enough.” Milkman, who coined the phrase “temptation bundling,” suggests that if we can combine two activities—one you should do but tend to avoid, and one you love to do but that may not be entirely productive—we can have better success achieving our goals.
The example she gave is this one: Milkman hates to exercise and loves to watch television when she’s got other important things to do. She told herself she could only watch her favorite shows when she was at the gym, so after a few evenings, she found herself rushing to get to the gym.
“Or like having a beer while you fold the laundry,” Nina said.
“Was that an example in the podcast?” I asked.
Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, writes about this in her book Better Than Before. Like Milkman, Rubin, who doesn’t focus on exercise, makes the case for combining activities in order to form a habit. So genius, but not so different from gradually loading your child’s plate of beige foods with colorful, healthy items. We’ve all done that, right?
As I began to develop my exercise habit, without thinking about it and without seeing fast results, music became my incentive to work out. It occurred to me that as I had my children and worked outside the home, I never noticed how much music had fallen by the wayside. If you ask me what I most look forward to on a long run, I’d have to put listening to music high up in the plus column. Now I devote a chunk of time on a regular basis to catching up on new artists as I curate and build my music playlists for exercising as well as warming up and stretching.
“You have the music taste of a fifteen-year-old,” my State Department colleague and friend Steve Royster told me after he came across my blog and playlists and agreed to read an early draft of this manuscript.
Ha, I smiled. You have no idea.
It’s not just my taste in music, which by the way is closer to that of a thirty-year-old. It’s my brain, too. It’s as if by developing a meaningful exercise habit and discovering my edge, I’ve found a way to live all of my ages at once. Kind of like being fifteen—or thirty, but with the benefit of being fifty-something.
I’m good with that.
***
I was in New York City in July 2016 attending the opening of the New York Music Festival as my daughter, Mia Walker, and my son, Adin Walker, made their New York professional debut working together as director and choreographer, respectively. I asked the concierge in my midtown hotel if she
