Natural and Artificial Exercise

If you are on a ‘diet,’ you have to exercise. But what do they mean by ‘exercise,’ and do you really have to do it?  Here is an example of two men, James and Andrew. They are brothers and work on the family farm together. 

James has a gym membership. On Monday, he drives an hour to the gym, spends an hour lifting 40-pound weights, and drives an hour back.

Andrew stays at the farm on Monday. While James spends 3 hours on his trip to the gym, Andrew spends three hours hauling hay bales off the hay wagon up into the barn loft by hand. 

According to the unwritten ‘rules of exercise,’ James has exercised. Andrew, on the other hand, is just farming.

But here’s the thing— the physical activity Andrew did is exercise, too. And it’s natural exercise. It’s a part of his life. He probably has to move hay bales around a lot. After the whole hay crop is in the barn loft, he may have to haul it down to sell some bales to folks with horses or goats or the like. He may also use some of the bales to feed up beef cattle for sale. Hay-bale lifting is a part of his life.

James, on the other hand, has to take time out of his life to do his artificial exercise in the artificial setting of the gym. He may feel guilty for leaving so much work to Andrew. In a future year when family farm earnings are down, he may have to let his gym membership go, and then where will he be? Of course, if he consumes fruit smoothies at the gym or buys junk food on the way home, he may well lose weight by skipping the gym and sticking to mere farming, like Andrew.

Artificial exercise may be the only kind of exercise that gets praised. But it’s so easy to skip that exercise when life comes along. You have to be pretty selfish to insist on your trip to the gym on the day when your elderly mother needs you to drive her to a doctor’s appointment or the grocery store. 

Natural exercise is exercise that is a part of your life. If you live up two flights of stairs, you have to climb those stairs multiple times daily. If your dog expects to be walked regularly, you have to get out and do it, or your dog will judge you. 

Sometimes in the modern world we go out of our way to get rid of natural exercise. We get a better apartment or house on the ground floor. We put a dog-run in the back yard so he can do his business without making us take the dog for a walk. We live someplace two blocks away from our child’s school— and instead of walking her to school, we drive her every day. And then we bitch that we can’t find time to go to the gym!

You can often incorporate natural exercise into your life by forming new habits. You can grow a garden, and then you will have to do gardening work during the growing season. You can inspect your home from top to bottom, attic to basement, routinely as a housecleaning measure, instead of letting some areas of your home be neglected. You can regularly take your children for walks to the park, and walk the dog even if he lives in a dog-run when not in the house.

Don’t ignore the natural exercise you do. If you aren’t lifting 40 pound weights in a gym, maybe you are lifting 40-pound children. Maybe you are carrying 40 pound sacks of cat food home from the store. If you are worn ragged by all the things you do in a day, probably a part of it is un-counted exercise.

As we grow older, we may make our lives more convenient, and this may mean reducing our natural exercise. We need to keep moving, though, as we get older, so we won’t get weak. Make a point of continuing to do physical chores in your life regularly. Walk to get places. Don’t park in the closest parking space, but further out— to protect your car, but also because that adds a little more walking to your life.

Getting some artificial exercise— I walk with Heavyhands weights— is nice, but not if you are at the same time lessening the amount of natural exercise you are getting. Since natural exercise is likely to be something you won’t quit, you need to cultivate it, appreciate it, and count it the same way you would count hours spent in ‘the gym.'

Questions: What kind of natural exercise do you get? Do you do any artificial exercise? What kinds? Are you satisfied that you are getting enough exercise--- natural and artificial--- to be healthy?

My recommended 'artificial exercise:'

Exercise for the Ketonian

‘Common sense’ on weight loss is the following: you have to exercise, preferably ‘at the gym,’ to ‘burn off calories.’ A more scientific approach, however, says you can’t outrun a bad diet, whether you call that diet ‘calories in, calories out’ or ‘eat less, move more.’ 

Some years ago while trying to lose weight, I tried walking every day for quite a distance on my rural road. I suppose I got a slight result. But it was at the cost of lots of time, and of the risk of wear-and-tear injuries to my joints from dragging my then-250 pound carcass down the roads. 

Now I am older, wiser in the science of diet, and am not worried about weight as much as I am reversing my diabetes and its complications. I know I don’t NEED to exercise for the keto diet to improve my health— I get better blood sugars every morning— or lose weight. But I’ve been feeling lousy for so long that I’m weaker and more out-of-shape than ever. I want to exercise for the right reason— to build up my muscles and get a little stronger.

I’m a lifelong walker, but I feel the need to add something to my walking workouts.  That something is ‘HeavyHands.’ HeavyHands is a system of exercising with special hand weights. You can use it with walking, ‘aerobic’ dance, and still exercises. By ‘pumping’ your HeavyHands weights while you walk, you are adding upper-body work to the workout your legs are getting from walking.

The HeavyHands system came out in the 1980s. Since I don’t have my original HeavyHands weights any more, I bought some on Ebay recently. The hand weights come with a strap so you don’t have to grip them so tightly. There is also a screw-off cap at either end of the hand weight, so you can screw-on additional weight amounts. I have the basic 1 pound weights, and additional weights are coming by mail.

For the past 2 days I have been walking out on my local road. My favorite route goes up and down hill and past some woods. The first day, I pumped my HeavyHands 1 pound weights as I walked. The next day, I started off with my 1 pounders, and had a 2 pound weight with me in a fanny pack. After warming up until the top of the big hill, I switched weights to the 2 pounds. I walked to the turn-around point and by then my arms were screaming for mercy, so I switched back to the 1 pounders for the balance of the walk.

I did the basic pump-and-walk mostly, but once in a while I did the arm motions ‘lateral flings’ and even ‘double ski poling’ without the usual footwork that go with that motion. I find that these more challenging arm motions actually energized me a bit when I was getting tired. 

For the winter months when walking on the road is out of the question, I can ‘dance’ in place in my house with the weights, or walk a path from my living room to my kitchen and back again.  That way I won’t get out-of-shape for the winter.

If you are thinking of trying HeavyHands yourself, besides the weights, which you can get second-hand on Ebay, you may want to buy one or the other of the ‘HeavyHands’ books by the creator of the exercise, Leonard Schwartz. The second book, ‘The HeavyHands Walking Book,’ is the more useful of the two, I think. And there are many YouTube videos that illustrate the HeavyHands exercises.

How about you? Is exercise a part of your Ketonian life? What forms of exercise do you favor?