About

Welcome to this blog. It’s one that I’m starting on a January 1 — the signature day of failed resolutions — with some trepidation because I, too, have my own track record of goals that have resulted in failure. But this is 2012, and the year I pass the half-century mark, and I think it is time that I fulfill a long-held desire to open up and participate in a useful, meaningful, spiritual, and practical dialogue about exercise.

I am not an athlete. I am a writer and professor with a desk job. I am like millions of people in the U.S. and throughout the world who struggle with issues of obesity/overweightedness, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes risk, and so forth. But even if I am not an athlete, I have always lived athletically. I love working out — walking, running, biking, dancing, swimming, yoga, tai chi, cross country skiing, snowshoeing, weights, and Zumba comprise a short list of activities I truly enjoy — but the demands of my desk job coupled with what I think are human desires to not rise overly early, to pass on the workout for the happy hour, etc., have often foiled my best intentions.

So, as an experiment that really didn’t even begin as an experiment but as a simple Facebook status update on January 1, 2011, I exhorted the world (my Facebook friends universe) to begin moving their bodies, to like my status if they did so, and to comment if they wished to share what they did. Likes on the first day hit the double digits, and comments did so, too — enough to encourage me to re-post the exhortation the next day, and the next, and all the way through December 31.

The experiment showed me something powerful about social networking: When we’re in it together, we’re more likely to do it than if we’re going it alone. Friends who were recovering from surgeries (my husband, among them), suffering from cancer, undergoing numerous uncertain and painful medical tests, experiencing low-grade depression over work, family, or economic situations would report that they were walking, dancing, hitting the gym, indulging themselves in the pool, sweating it out in yoga, or even grooving hard to the beat of the household broom, yard rake and snow shovel because of the support they received. I had my own successes: my weight dropped by 18 pounds and by the end of 2012, I’m fairly confident that I’ll be at the healthy weight for a person of my body, age, and stature. I went from walking at a 3.8 mph pace to running at a 4.7 mph pace and feeling like I could sustain it for a couple of hours. And I set a personal goal in January of moving my body 300 of the 365 days of the year, and a rather ambitious goal in November of hitting the 1,000 mark for miles walked and/or run in 2011. Those goals almost — but not quite — hit the mark: I moved my body 295 days and I logged 962 miles.

Those lessons reminded me of the wise words that Jordan Seng delivered in a New Year’s Day sermon at the First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu on January 1, 2006: Let yourself fail. But try not. Because if you don’t try out of a fear of failing, you never will have gained anything at all.

This blog is about moving your body, any way, any how. Even though I’ve been a professional writer for most of my adult life, success with regular production on schedule is not exactly my strong suit. But I “resolve” to post at least once a week about the value of moving one’s body, interesting workouts or exercises, hopes, successes, struggles, and determinations. I will emphasize that I am neither an athlete nor a fitness expert. So I cannot back up anything I say with empirical evidence. I can only speak from experience. I invite you to read, and I invite you to comment so that we can actually talk about health, fitness, diets, exercise, long lives, medications, illnesses, and everything else in a way that is meaningful. And I invite you to nag me, if I start to fail in my resolutions.

Himanee.