How diabetes turned on my exercise motivation
A little bit of background. Exactly 1 year ago I visited with my Doctor to get some treatment for a persistent cough that had plagued me for about three months. Of course he insisted on a complete checkup at the same time, so off I went to the local blood clinic to get the requisite blood tests done. A couple of days later I was back to the doctor, fully expecting to get some antibiotics to help with my cough, but to my surprise he had totally forgotten the cough, but he did tell me that I had the early stages of type II diabetes. Now that was a shock! Not severe enough that I would require insulin, but he did send me home with a six-month prescription for medication in a tablet form. Yuck!
Get off the couch
The other prescribed treatment was basically that. Get off the couch, elevate your activity level, decrease your food intake, basically lose weight and get active. Sounds easy, right? Well, not if you have spent virtually all your life being a bit of a couch potato, and had certainly never enjoyed, or for that matter even partaken of any regular physical activity. But diabetes? Now that is certainly an exercise motivation, not the type I was expecting, but certainly an effective one.
The gym
What does everybody do when they decide they need to get fit? Go to the gym of course! Well, I did that, and I can tell you I am very glad the gym offered membership for only one month, as that was one long 30 days. I am quite sure a lot of people enjoy going to the gym, but for me it was the one time of the day that I dreaded the most. Sure, it helped me reduce some of my excess flab and certainly toned me up a little, but if it is a miserable experience for you, one thing is guaranteed is that you will quit, and soon!
The pool
Next on the exercise training agenda was trying doing lengths every day at our local pool. I had read that swimming was actually a wonderful exercise, as it quietly works pretty well every muscle in your body. Well, that may be, but I can tell you that lying face-down in cold water, by yourself, staring at the concrete pool bottom, doing endless back and forth lengths at 5 30 in the morning is not my idea of fun. In fact it rates right up there with going to the gym.
Performance motivation
The key is finding something you enjoy if you are ever going to have the motivation to exercise consistently. For me it was fairly simple, I discovered I enjoyed walking. The discovery came about after I had spent some time investigating the techniques of self hypnosis for weight loss, as I had purchased a series of MP3 tracks on self hypnosis, and in order to get the best use from them, I simply loaded them into my MP3 player and listened to them while I went for a walk. Each of these sessions was about 30 min. or better, so as I went through the series of tapes, I found I was not only getting an increased urge to exercise by virtue of the training, I was actually kick-starting my fitness level with the walking each day.
Maintaining the enthusiasm
A very common problem with a lot of people that do an initial “burst” of exercise activity is that their enthusiasm wanes after a period of time. I do believe it is because of the training instilled with the self hypnosis techniques that this has not happened to me. In fact it is quite the opposite, as I now find myself returning from work every day genuinely looking forward to slipping on my runners, grabbing a Walkman, and heading out for an hours aggressive walking.
Six months later
My follow-up checkup with the doctor six months after my original type II diabetes diagnosis was kind of fun in a way. Not only that in that six months had I shed 30 kg of weight, my blood sugar levels had dropped from the high 8′s to consistently between 5 and 6. In fact, my Dr. told me that if I kept that up for another six months he would likely be taking me of the medication that he initially prescribed. Now that would be quite an achievement!
Bruce Stevens, a recent Type 11 Diabete’s sufferer, found the change of lifestyle needed to halt the Diabete’s progression, when he discovered hypnosis cds that taught him to look for an exercise he’d enjoy.
Bruce maintains Hypnosishealthcures.com where sound advice on all things related to self hypnosis can be found, including how they help in building confidence