Oh yeah...walking helps you feel good

I was feeling a little out of it earlier this evening at my sons's soccer game. I had some dental pain and decided to watch the game while walking outside the perimeter fence. In just a little while my mind was off the pain and my son's team was seven and one.

Last year I wrote an article about the negative mood swing possible when you put certain substances in your body.
Click to view my mood article.

Christine Burke on goals

If you've been reading Big Man Walking, you might remember that my two goals are to lose 50 pounds of fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle by December 31, 2008. My first strategy is walking. An expert promised to help me. At my Toastmasters club today two members covered areas I'm really interested in. One spoke on Nonviolence and I will contact her for a future post. Christine Burke, the other speaker, is owner or part owner of two fitness clubs called Fitness Together. Christine spoke about goals and her example had to do with losing weight. I was definitely paying attention. She has a style of goal setting called S.M.A.R.T. goals and I promise to share more about it after talking with her further. I Googled S.M.A.R.T. goals and what I found sounds very close to what Christine shared earlier today. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely. Do you have goals? Are they S.M.A.R.T.?

Whether or not you have goals, you can still walk starting right now.

Whether or not you have a pedometer, you can still walk starting right now.

Whether or not you have the perfect gear, you can still walk starting right now.

If you're already walking, congratulations! If you're not walking yet, what are you waiting for?


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Click on the title of this post to see Christine and her Program Director, Mike Deibler, in one of her Fitness Together locations. You can also click here - FTNorthCounty.com to visit the site of the Fitness Together where I will see Christine on a regular basis starting Monday. I copied the following information about Christine Burke, Fitness Together owner, from one of her websites.

Christine hates exercise, and feels if she can keep up her fitness program, so can you. Christine weighed around 170 pounds at her heaviest, and her cholesterol level was at 240. Unlike her co-workers, Christine prefers to sit still while reading books, watching movies, and playing with digital photos. Despite this, she now maintains her weight under 135, her blood pressure is 110/70, and her last cholesterol reading was 160. Her athletic achievements include being the Slowest Kid on the Swim Team and accumulating many bruises while competing for the UCLA Fencing Team. Christine has a BSEE and MBA from UCLA, and she actually does enjoy roller blading and boogie boarding. She motivates herself to work out by hanging out with the best personal trainers in San Diego.

40 miles in ten days

Forty miles is a good start to the year. Here is just a little bit of trivia because I have played a fair amount of poker in my four and a half decades on this earth. Forty miles is short for the phrase "forty miles of railroad track" which means you have four tens. You hear the phrase "thirty miles" much more often because you make three tens much more often than four tens, which is a very nice hand. So when it's time to show your hand, you turn it over and say, "Forty miles," and the vast majority of the time you hear "very nice hand" in return. Once in a while when you have "forty miles of railroad track" you might hear, "Nice hand, but it's not a winner," because someone has a hand so "big" that it beats four tens.

When you have walked 40 miles in your first ten days of a resolution or on track to a goal, you have a "very nice hand". Now I'm in the middle of my forties and I have 40 miles, a very nice hand, and I would like 40 more and then maybe, 40 more again. Do you have a very nice hand? Would you like 40 more miles? Get a pedometer from wherever you like and get started. Whether it costs $20 delivered or $200 is up to you. Or you can go down to Target or your favorite sports oriented store and get one there. Just do it or something like that. Now. Today. Join me. Join us. OK?