Getting Back into a Fitness and Exercise Routine!

by Ruth Crilly | Jun 18, 2014

how to exercise and fitness routine

It is the year of the slug. Well it is for me, at any rate. I have never been quite so sedentary; whole days – weeks – sat virtually motionless in front of the computer. If an alien landed and peered in through my office window, it would probably think I was dead, but for the tiny, repetitive movements that my fingers make as they dance over the keyboard. The almost imperceptible flicker of my eyelids as I take my twice-hourly blink. In fact, if the alien had to choose a life-form to take back to its planet, and it had the choice between me and a slug from my garden, I’ve no doubt that it would be the slug that would get beamed up to the flying saucer and I would get left behind, still staring at my illuminated screen, slack-jawed and drooling a little from the corners of my mouth.

Now that I have painted such a wonderful picture of my sloth-like self, let me tell you this: I have joined a gym. Yes. Me! For the first time in many years. I used to be something of a gym enthusiast, attending between four and six classes every single week. Spinning, body conditioning, something called “body pump”. That was in the peak days of model-dom, when my only real job (apart from walking to about ten castings a day, constant international non-luxurious travel and standing in the rain on beaches wearing nightgowns) was to keep myself looking trim. God, was I trim. I could tighten my stomach and thigh and bottom muscles all at the same time and not even feel as though I might wee myself. Moving on..

It occurred to me, as I sat there during the gym signing-up process (so many questions, took about eight hours!) that it’s really rather hard to climb back onto the exercise train if you haven’t been on it for a while. You get into a rut of inertia. You get quite comfy spending time on the sofa watching whole series of things on Netflix at once, sometimes until one in the morning. Or two in the morning. Or even three. (Not me.) And once that happens, it’s quite common for your good eating habits to fly out of the window too. I’ve had a few little naughty fridge routines, lately – mostly involving dark chocolate truffles and lemon curd flavoured yoghurt. Not at the same time, but still. Enough bad habits that I’ve been loathe to struggle into my usual jeans and have taken to buying looser “pants” with relaxed fit waistbands. Ha!

Anyway, I put together a video with a few motivational tips. They might help if you’ve become disheartened with your exercise routine or if you’ve not been able to exercise because of illness or work commitments or perhaps you’ve had a baby and want to feel fitter… I’m planning lots more exercise and health posts – I’ve been busy trying new gym classes, so I might do a series on those. Some of them have been quite funny – if anyone had actually seen me trying to do Pilates to a dance soundtrack… Dear Lord. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Click here, please, if you can’t see the video below, otherwise simply engage the muscles in one of your fingers to scroll down the page and click the play button.