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Okay, I admit it -- I've become pretty much of a couch potato. But we all know that exercise is a good mood stabilizer, as part of the overall program. I'd really love to get rid of more of the weight leftover from when I was on Zyprexa. Still, my p-doc's written prescription of 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, 5 days a week, only got me moving for about two weeks.
So my husband and I have been trying to figure out what we could do that would be exercise and be fun at the same time. He struck on ... dancing.
You probably have bad memories of square dance in gym class and maybe awkward ballroom lessons when you were 12 years old and the last thing you wanted to do was touch a boy or a girl.
Well, we're older than that now. And those gym class dances like the Virginia Reel, where you dance non-stop for about 15 minutes at a whack, changing partners every 90 seconds and flirting shamelessly ... well, at our age, they're pretty fun. And seriously aerobic.
So we've lined up a weekly dance schedule, plus lessons in 19th century ballroom dance, just for the heck of it. I mean, why not learn a kind of dance that eventually will require wearing a hoop skirt?
That's our kind of fun. For one of my girlfriends, it's tennis lessons. "I was really surprised to find out how much anger I have in me when I hit that ball," she said.
What about you? Do you have a kind of exercise that's fun for you? Let the community know what's fun for you and why. It could spark some new energy for someone like me, who just needs the right idea to get them off the couch.
You got a big laugh out of me when you quoted your girlfriend's benefit from tennis lessons!
50 lbs. in 8 yrs. Really bad for my physical health. Now have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, blood sugar in diabetic range. Doc is lowering dosage of offending drug & adding Topamax. Also take a bunch of other meds for bipolar. I see you are taking Topamax. May I ask what dosage & is it working at suppressing the appetite & causing weight loss? Doc also wrote a script along with my meds for 30 min. of exercise a day (at least) & says it is as important as my meds, to consider it a medication--that it is that important for elevating mood, improving my physical health & increasing self-esteem (which is pretty much in the gutter now due to weight gain & husband's negative reaction to it).