September 16, 2004
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Walking the Mall
I've taken 5,639 steps so far today. I took about 4,500 of them at the Mission Valley Shopping Center, as part of a Mall Walkers group.
It was my second session. My first session, on Tuesday, I followed the instructions and went through the warm-up exercises. That was a big mistake. The stretching and twisting of my back started me off in pain, the arthritis pain in my back that I'm trying to escape. The fast walk eased the pain a bit, though.
2,000 steps is about a mile. The path we followed was designed to be as close to a mile as possible. The path was designed before they started adding a new food court to the mall, forcing a long detour. When the food court is completed, in another ten days, the walking distance should become almost exactly one mile per circuit again. We take two circuits in the early morning hours before the stores open for business.
One restaurant was open, Ruby's. They start serving breakfast at 7:00. But our group of just over thirty seniors doesn't eat before setting out. We get a cup of senior's coffee for $0.53 at Target when the walk is over. A few of us do, anyway. We sit, sip, chat and rehydrate for about half an hour after the walk, until the other stores begin to open.
Driving to the mall for my Oasis classes usually takes me twenty minutes or less. Driving in for the walking sessions has taken 45 minutes or more each morning. Early morning traffic on Highway 94 moves at about 20 miles per hour -- when it moves at all -- and the traffic on the Interstate 805 gets up to 35. The transitions onto and off of the freeways poke along very slowly.
After my first session, I just came home and changed clothes. No snack. Of course my blood sugar went very low. When I figured it was time for lunch, I barely made it upstairs. Today I had a light snack when I got home. I still had low sugar problems at lunch time, but not as severe as the previous time. I made a giant all-vegetable salad for lunch and took over an hour to eat it.
Today's session tired me a bit more than the first one did. That means I probably depleted my glycogen reserves, which is a good thing. If I can keep burning away the reserves, my body may start burning fat again, the way it used to. I'll have to continue to avoid carbohydrates for that to happen, though.
If I participate in 27 walking sessions this fall season, they'll credit me with the cost of my pedometer. Counting my steps will become free. Attending all of the sessions has other benefits, too. Besides, if I had wanted a free pedometer, Cathy would have given me one. She has several. She gets them free from somewhere.
Comments (2)
I used to do the Walking the mall thing too!!! Can't believe there's actually a sort of club of mall walkers. Unfortunately the mall I was going too was quite small and it quickly got boring. But it is a good idea, especially for people like me who suffer walking under the sun. Walking is perhaps the best thing to do to keep in shape, even better than running. Nowadays when I go for long walks alone for fitness I can't do it without a good book.
Keep it up!!!
Are you on a low-carb diet? I have found that that is the best way to lose weight - and it also is a great detoxifier. (I am talking about detoxifying prescription drug residues and toxins left by artificial preservatives - I am explaining this, because my wife tells me that Americans misinterpret "detoxifying" as being something to do with drug addiction.) I lost more weight, more quickly, on this diet than any other that I have ever tried.
Can you give me your honest opinion on ssri drugs? Do you think they are valid and actually help people, or do you think that they can cause harm to people?