Comparatively Painless Cardio

The Elliptical Machine

I have a new acronym I coined - CPC. It's "Comparatively Painless Cardio". It pertains to my exercise routine, and the idea came about this way:

When I joined the Texan's Gym (benefit of employment at Texas Instruments back in 1995), I would run 1/2 mile and walk 1/2 mile. To ordinary people, and people who run any distances, one mile is absolutely nothing. But for me, my lungs would feel like they were going to explode and death was around the corner. Though I did several other things in my workout (eg, lifting weights) that were tolerable and beneficial, I had it fixed in my mind that the workout was worthless unless I did the mile as my cardio routine. Would dread the workout because of this, and my workouts shrank to a paltry few minutes, fewer and fewer times during the week. Finally I quit altogether after 6 months while continuing to pay the membership fee.

I joined 24 Hour Fitness this year and history was about to repeat itself. Thought that for weight loss and cardio, you had to do some work on the treadmill - jogging in place. Using "no pain, no gain" as my mantra I was making 10 minutes on the treadmill a necessary activity. My joints were achy and my lungs once again felt like they would explode. My workouts were inching downward, because I dreaded the "necessary" work. Only by being nosy, and looking at the calorie count on someone else's elliptical machine (next to my treadmill machine), did I notice that you can burn a lot of calories and not cause destruction to joints, ankles or lungs.

The elliptical machine is a family of exercise machines that give you cardio benefit without your feet and legs bearing the brunt of your whole body landing with each step. For whatever reason, the lungs are also much more forgiving - but in 15 minutes you can still kill off 210 calories. Bottom line here is that my routine is good even if I did no cardio - it's certainly better than no exercise at all. If an activity is making you dread your workout -- kill it dead. Shoot it between the eyes. You can bring it back far in the future if you have built up the endurance, but don't quit over something like that. I do many other routines that are "comparatively painless" and they make the time worthwhile.

This also works for food incidentally -- I went on a Slimfast diet 5 years ago. Everyday for lunch, I'd have a Slimfast drink (vanilla or chocolate) as a meal replacement. When I looked at the people around me having salad, ravioli, French fries and what not, I felt like a part of me had died. Food is a sensory, touch and smell, cultural experience. It's far more than nutrition in your stomach. Take away the "je ne sais quoi" of eating, and you're left with an ultimate empty -- empty of joy along with calories. I'm now on what I call a "modified" Atkins diet -- lots of meat and green vegetables. But I haven't banished any of my first loves (carbs) I just have fewer. And I haven't introduced anything I dislike (tofu, sprouts). Your diet and workout should be a pleasure, not a punishment. If you finetune them enough, you can do what you need, enjoy it, and voila -- it's "comparatively painless". Somewhere on the continuum between fat couch potato, and obsessive gym-bunny robot, you can be just a healthy person.