Posts in Health
10 tips for walking in the age of social distancing. Yes, that's a thing.
10 tips for walking in the age of social distancing. Yes, that's a thing.

Nearly every state stay-at-home order permits walking and exercising outside and that’s a good thing.

Getting outside and moving around is more essential than ever, and like many of you, we’re walking more than ever. Even guys who run or work out in the gym or participate in fitness classes are using walking as a form of exercise, some of them, like my husband, for the first time. Although I’ve been going into work for the past several weeks, this week, I’m trying out teleworking, and I’m exhausted. I don’t know whether it’s figuring out the tech side of working from home when everyone else is at home or the temptation to just sit in front of the computer, especially when all of your meetings are teleconferences or WebX or Teams meetings. But one thing is for sure. working from home, or just being home, day after day, is physically and mentally draining.

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Exercise, Walking, Walk-Talk Therapy, Wellness, HealthCarolee Walkerwalking, Jennifer Udler, Positive Strides, walk-talk therapyComment
Just one lifetime. Yes there's only one.
Just one lifetime. Yes there's only one.

Last year, around this time, about a month before Mia and Julian’s wedding, I was sitting in Dr. David Moss’s office telling him that I had a debilitating range of motion issue in my shoulder that was preventing me from performing a dance Adin had choreographed for the surprise flash mob at the reception.

Dr. Moss smiled. He’s a member of the practice at Washington Orthopedics and Sports Medicine that has supported me among their clients that come from the Washington, D.C., professional sports and dance worlds. He removed a joint from one of my fingers probably on the same day he might have fixed a Caps finger.

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Happiness, Exercise, Fitness, Health, Personal Growth, Running, WellnessCarolee WalkerBrooklyn Turkey Trot, Adin Walker, Wedding Flash Mob, Prospect Park Track ClubComment
How To Be Younger. It's Not What You Think
How To Be Younger. It's Not What You Think

I was having lunch at a restaurant in Princeton and talking about my sense of accomplishment after figuring out how to watch TV on my laptop when a young woman sitting at the table next to me turned her head and said, “Are you talking about Younger?”

That was Tessa Albertson, a student at Princeton. She played the role of Caitlin, Liza’s daughter, while she was in high school.

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Happiness, Exercise, feminism, Fitness, Health, Personal Growth, Self-Help, WritingCarolee WalkerAging well, aging, Wellness, turning 60, youngerComment
Excerpt from GETTING MY BOUNCE BACK: Hardwiring happiness
Excerpt from GETTING MY BOUNCE BACK: Hardwiring happiness

Once you train yourself to consciously absorb the positive experience or to tell yourself you are absorbing the positive experience, the payoff is you’ll begin to create new neural connections that transform passing mental states, such as feeling cheerful, into lasting neural traits, i.e., being a cheerful person.

Maybe this is what happens subconsciously to people who live amid incredible natural beauty. I suspected this when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I’m wondering if this is what is happening in Jamaica.

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Health, Exercise, Jamaica, Memoir, Personal Growth, Self-Help, Wellness, HappinessCarolee Walkergetting my bounce back, happiness, exercise, Jamaica, fitness, wellnessComment
How to get off the couch
How to get off the couch

Whenever you put your ideas out there into the universe, it's always scary and, from my perspective, takes courage. 

Yet whether you're a painter or a director or a choreographer or a writer, regardless of your intention, once you make your stuff public, it's like a free-for-all. It's 100 percent up to your audience to make sense of your message, interpret or reinterpret your ideas, and like or dislike your work or even you.

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Health, Self-Help, Personal Growth, Exercise, FitnessCarolee Walkerself-love, Fitness, self-help, compassion, Self-esteem, fitness habit Comment
When helping yourself means reaching out to others for help
When helping yourself means reaching out to others for help

“How would you feel about categorizing your book as self-help or personal growth?”

I was having a telephone conversation with an editor at a publishing house about my memoir. I had finished the manuscript in August and had been pitching the project to literary agents and publishers, taking online workshops on how to publish a book, and tweaking the pages based on feedback from readers.

I was never sure whether it was a good idea to call my book a memoir. I’m always visiting bookstores to look at what’s on the memoir shelf or the self-help, psychology, or personal growth shelves, so I get why she was asking the question.

It’s my fitness journey, that’s true, but I wouldn’t say fitness defines me.

“Sure,” I said, “I’m good with that.”

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Exercise, Fitness, Health, Memoir, Personal Growth, Self-HelpCarolee Walkerself-help, memoir, Health, Fitness, feeling good, exercise, writing, confidenceComment
How you know it's working
How you know it's working

It's ridiculous that after all these years I'm still fighting with myself at night to wash my face. I look at myself in the mirror as I'm brushing my teeth and think, what's the worst that could happen?

And then I clean my face, removing any makeup around my eyes, exfoliate, use toner, apply products my dermatologist prescribed for me and then serum and nighttime moisturizer on my face and neck. The whole thing takes too long, but there aren't any short cuts. I've tried.

The other night, as I was having this conversation with myself in the mirror, I noticed my skin was looking not bad. I've still got that lived-in look, but the lines in my forehead, in particular, were, without a doubt, less prominent. 

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Exercise, Fitness, Health, NutritionCarolee Walkerexercise, Wellness, weight loss, feeling good, lifestyleComment
Excerpt from GETTING MY BOUNCE BACK: Holiday Parties
Excerpt from GETTING MY BOUNCE BACK: Holiday Parties

I went to my first holiday open house of the season last weekend and took pleasure in getting ready in five minutes. All I needed to do was grab something festive from my closet and put it on. For the first time in years everything in there fits; some things a little loosely, although I’m fine with that, too.

So here are the two things I want to mention about holiday parties:

1. How you feel

2. How you look

I would say these are one and the same because how you feel is most of the time how you look.

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Exercise, Fitness, HealthCarolee Walkerholiday parties, feeling good, WellnessComment
Mission Accomplished: Marine Corps Marathon October 22, 2017
Mission Accomplished: Marine Corps Marathon October 22, 2017

I used the opportunity while I was waiting to see Dr. Andrew Wolff at Washington Orthopedics and Sports Medicine on the Tuesday before the 42nd Marine Corps Marathon (MCM), my second marathon ever, to read the race FAQs.

He squeezed me in after I limped out of my chair late Monday morning. Usually Mondays are my workout day off, but my MCM training schedule included short runs every day except for Friday the week of the race. I felt so good during that early morning 4-mile run that I remember thinking, “This is what it feels like when running feels good.”

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Exercise, Fitness, Health, Nutrition, RunningCarolee WalkerMarine Corps Marathon, marathon, Running Comment
"There is no joy without gratitude"
"There is no joy without gratitude"

Two Sundays ago I crashed after running 18 miles as part of my Marines Corps Marathon training and was trying to nap.

I limped downstairs into the kitchen and told Bob my legs were twitchy.

"I'm so exhausted but can't fall asleep."

"Have a shot of Old Bushmills," Bob said.

"A real shot." 

It was 2 o'clock.

"No sipping."

I poured myself a glass of whiskey and drank it. In one shot. 

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Exercise, Fitness, Health, RunningCarolee WalkerMarine Corps Marathon, marathon, mindfulness, Running, gratitude, gritComment
Marine Corps Marathon training update
Marine Corps Marathon training update

JSYK I'm 6 weeks away from the Marines Corps Marathon (MCM) on October 22. This will be my second marathon ever and my first MCM.

Back at the 24-week mark I shared my proposed 20-week training plan with Kevin and Zach and both expressed the same perspective. Even though I've been running for 3 years, I chose a RunnersConnect training plan for beginners in order to ease in slowly.

Still, Kevin especially was worried about my committing to any training plan while I was still dealing with my typical issues - hamstring strain and glute pain. Both of these are overuse injuries, Kevin pointed out, so diving into even a mildly rigorous running schedule before these are completely healed just didn't make sense to him. Zach, too, worried about this. Remember I have hamstring and glute soreness after simple body-weight squats. Forget about kettle balls.

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Exercise, Running, Fitness, HealthCarolee Walkermarathon, RunnersConnect, Running, Marine Corps MarathonComment
Harder, better, faster, stronger: And now, smarter
Harder, better, faster, stronger: And now, smarter

I always found it ridiculous that high schoolers who never played sports thought the football team was made up of dumb jocks especially when many players ended up at our best colleges and universities.

Where did the stereotype of the dumb jock come from?

Just watch a professional soccer game or Major League Baseball or any Olympic event and think about how much stuff the players are pouring into their brains before, during, and after the games. Ok some of these athletes might make stupid decisions off the field in their personal lives, but these have nothing to do with smarts.

So I'm not surprised to read about another study showing that exercise is good for your brain.

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Exercise, Health, Fitness, RunningCarolee WalkerRunning, endurance, exerciseComment
Cherry Blossom 10 Miler 2017: Call It Love and Devotion
Cherry Blossom 10 Miler 2017: Call It Love and Devotion

"We need to head home early so this one can get into bed," Bob gestured at me as he told our friends at a Vassar event at the National Museum of African American History and Culture last Saturday night that we'd need to duck out.

"She's got an early race tomorrow."

It was true, I did need to be up by 4:30 am Sunday morning, but it's not like I'm a professional or even competitive athlete. I've been running and doing these races for 3 years, and this idea always crosses my mind.

But still.

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Fitness, Health, Exercise, RunningCarolee WalkerRunning, Fitness, Cherry Blossom 10 MilerComment
Rock n Roll Half Marathon, Washington, D.C., 2017: The Good Ol' Days
Rock n Roll Half Marathon, Washington, D.C., 2017: The Good Ol' Days

"Girl, go faster. We're late for brunch."

Among the many political signs at last Saturday's half marathon was this one, my favorite, because whenever anybody asks me about my experience as a runner, I always say that I'm a 50-something who wanted to go to lunch but went for a run instead.

We were lined up at the start when a group of three women around my age asked me if I would take their picture. Through the lens of the iPhone camera I could see one of them wanted to be at brunch instead of shivering on 14th Street and about to run 13.1 miles in 26 degree weather.

"Have you done this before?" I asked.

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Health, Fitness, Half marathon, Exercise, RunningCarolee WalkerFitness, Rock n Roll Half Marathon, Rock n Roll Washington, Running, Perseverance Comments
Where it began
Where it began

By last Thursday afternoon I was feeling the effects of the upper body workout I did with Zach Schumaker, my trainer, on Wednesday night. My pecs were so inflamed and sore I wasn't 100 percent convinced I wasn't having a heart attack. In general I welcome delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) because it means I'm placing stress on my muscles, allowing them to adapt.

But then of course I'm forced to change up my training. So on Friday, instead of cross training on the elliptical or swimming, I did walking intervals on the treadmill at a 12 percent incline; no stress on the upper body but I got my heart rate up high enough to feel great getting ready for work and throughout the day.

I was planning to do a long swim Saturday morning but still felt sore. A year ago I would have pushed through but if I've learned anything through all of this it's the value of deloading. So instead, with my head still on my pillow, I smiled.

I'll do an easy run.

It wasn't the run that made me smile, although I enjoy these shakeout runs.

It was the bagel. With peanut butter.

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Exercise, Fitness, Health, Nutrition, RunningCarolee Walkerexercise, Fitness, Health, weight loss, Nutrition, grit Comments
But I do I do
But I do I do

"Welcome to my year of aging youthfully."

This is what I typed in response to one of the birthday wishers on my Facebook timeline on Wednesday. (Remember when we called it a "Wall"?)

"You are finding the key to aging backwards," my childhood friend Debbie Levine Herman wrote.

(I fully embrace the world of Facebook. I view it as a gigantic community bulletin board and LOVE seeing posts no matter how trivial or silly and count on them to keep me up to date period.)

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Exercise, Fitness, HealthCarolee Walkerskiing, exercise, overcoming fearComment
But, oh, I got stamina
But, oh, I got stamina

Why it matters what I tell myself when I run

I reconnected over the summer with a woman I first met when I was living outside San Francisco and our daughters had become friends. We were having coffee in Palo Alto late one afternoon when she told me she had lupus. 

The subject came up because she was apologizing for meeting me in her workout clothes as she was just coming from the gym.

Really? Everyone in Palo Alto looks like they're in exercise clothes.

She told me that one of the ways she copes with bouts of extreme pain in her joints is by exercising regularly.

This memory popped into my head a few weeks ago as I woke up after sleeping nearly 12 hours. The last of my Thanksgiving guests had left late on that Saturday, and I practically passed out within minutes.

My plan had been to do a longish run that Sunday morning, but when I stepped out of bed, my sides and lower back were so sore and stiff that I nearly crept down the stairs to make myself a cup of coffee.

I assumed I had suffered a sleeping injury by being in bed so long.

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Exercise, Fitness, Health, Running, SwimmingCarolee Walkerexercise, endurance, Fitness, self-help, self-talk, mindfulnessComment
Any minute you will cross that line
Any minute you will cross that line

There is always something to be positive about.

Always.

Election Day is here and these last few weeks have been like trudging in the mud. Everywhere you go, everyone you talk to, people are uncomfortable with how this election is making them feel. About their country, about the world, about their communities, about themselves.

The New York Times new column Meditation for Real Life could not have appeared in our feeds at a more opportune moment.

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Exercise, Fitness, HealthCarolee WalkerRunning, volunteer, Marine Corps Marathon Comment