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Archive for May 12th, 2008

A Few Thoughts On The Importance Of The Expat Exercise Plan.

I came back from two years of living in the Philippines 12kg (26lb) heavier than when I had left Australia. I was several inches wider and I could hardly tie my shoe laces without panting. I am sure my blood pressure was up there somewhere I didn’t want to go and I know I was in line for the hereditary diabetes since I was knocking back 2 litres of Coke a day, the cola drink not the narcotic.

I was in bad shape and it hadn’t happened overnight. Two years of sedentary living, even when I was working it was pushing a mouse and keyboard around for a living, had gradually pushed me up and over the self set bounds of comfort. I smoked 20 or more cigarettes a day, slept badly and snored like a freight train. Something had to give sooner or later.

After the first week of stuffing my face with real bread, enjoying not sweating, ever, shivering and scraping ice off the windscreen of the car, I got to work on myself. First thing was to get an exercise routine happening so it would become a habit.

Just as not exercising can become a habit, the reverse is true and far better for you. The secret is to take it so easy to begin with you are champing at the bit to get sweaty and really work out. Everything is about pleasure and pain, so associate more pleasure with exercising and more pain with being a couch potato and you have the motivation thing beat!

I use the Royal Canadian Air Force 5BX program, or at least my version of it. 5BX and 10BX were the fitness fads of the sixties at some point although originally developed as an exercise regime for flight crews. My version is you pick five simple exercises and do them five times each as soon as you get out of bed. I did a waist spin, a deep knee bend, a side stretch, an arm swing and a bend over and touch my toes set of five each side. At first it hurt and I could hardly do these five simple exercises!

Gradually, each day got easier but I resisted the temptation to try and rip along to 10BX. The regular, simple, limited exercise started to not only get me in the habit of doing SOMETHING, but it got the blood flowing and stopped the foot cramps and other problems lack of circulation had been causing. Sitting in front of a computer can bring on pain in the feet, cramps in the stomach, all sorts of weird ills and aches all due to not using muscle groups. Use it or lose it!

The next thing I did was quit smoking. I had known that going from fifty cents a pack to ten dollars a pack would be both a shock and a good incentive to quit. In the three and something months since I last smoked, I have not smoked 2300 plus cigarettes! Can you imagine laying out over two thousand cigarettes in front of you and saying, ok, stick each one in your face, set it alight and suck in the carcinogens! So far I have not spent (can’t really say saved as where is the money?) AUD$920 (US$644 or P36,000). Awesome!

How did I do it? Firstly I had nicotine patches (three of them) but I never used them. They can cost as much as the cigarettes and can be just as hard to quit as they are merely a different method of nicotine delivery. I just got my head around it and associated more pleasure with quitting and more pain with staying a smoker. The money factor helped, especially when I rationalised I was here, away from my wife and kids to make money, not set fire to it. Believe me, the mental factor is the major one and unless you really have a handle on your personal motivation for quitting, it ain’t going to happen!

Then I had to look at my diet. That came about after I lost a sedentary job selling cars and got another, more active job working with road repair crews. One of my old martial arts students owns the company and two of the old gang work for him. They found me just when I needed a job and, unknowingly, a change of lifestyle. Funny how these things happen!

I went onto a low carbohydrate diet, cut out sugar, bread, potatoes, rice, noodles etc. Ate lots of meat and fat and suffered for the first two weeks as my body cleansed itself of the toxins and sugar. I was already sleeping better from quitting smoking, but now I slept even better still without the glucose spikes and sugar rushes. Check out the Atkins Diet for yourselves, it may be what you need, it may not. I’m not a nutritionist or a health professional, I’m just telling you what worked for me!

So now I am back in Cebu several kilos lighter, cleansed of my nicotine addiction and feeling so much more active and physically fit than ever before. I am walking everyday, using the wonderful pavement (sidewalk) the Cebu South Road provides, the only decent walking track in the entire province! I am starting to get back into a Boxing Workout (I used to be a professional Boxing Trainer and before that an Inter-Service Heavyweight Boxer in the Army) I drink only Diet Coke or water, have less caffeine each day and each one of those has half the sugar they used to have. Once or twice a week I drink booze and every now and then I eat whatever the heck I want, then get back on track!

Not eating bread is easy here, the same goes for potatoes and the rice I consume is far less than before and always washed for starch after cooking. I eat less each meal and move more and the weight is staying off. More importantly, I have more energy for doing stuff with my kids. So many of us expats marry women half or more our own age and then start a new, young family. We owe it to them and ourselves to be around to enjoy the family and the new lease on life as long as we can. Taking better care of yourself is the first step. It really has made a world of difference for me.