...is a total crock of shit. There. I said it. Pick up any health and fitness magazine, and it's filled with men and women with already-perfect bodies doing exercises designed to help them attain and even more perfect body! Just 20 minutes a day and you too, can look like a super model!
Riiight. So anyhow, despite my derision at the disproportionate body image that society, combined with the media, has convinced women that they need to achieve (and maintain!), I too, find myself at least attempting to look more like the ideal and less like...well...me. Now, there isn't a person I know who couldn't stand to tweak their diets a little bit. Pobody's Nerfect, and we all have our little "sins" that we choose not to completely leave. Now, pllease note the use of the word "choose." That was very deliberate, as what we put down our gullets every day is a choice. I refuse to be one of those people who doesn't take responsibility for their health, and I won't support those who do so.
However, there is an element of health that is sadly neglected by some, embraced by others, and can appear very inaccessible to a large, silent group of people. Those same fitness magazines offer fantastic tips for adding weight loss moves into our everyday lives: park far away from the door, take the stairs, get a pedometer and reach for that 10,000 steps a day. The exercises they feature are fat busting! muscle building! toning! optimizing! the key too all things blissful and perfect...oh wait. Sorry. Uh, went a little too far.
Aaaaanyhow. There are those of us who have physical limitations that restrict us from doing a lot of what is touted as a great workout. For some, it's chronic back problem. Some have had shoulder surgery. For me, it's my knee. It was ruined by a doctor's negligence back in December of 2004, and since then I have worn an ACL brace and walked with a cane to prevent falls. According to a Functional Capacity Evaluation, I have 8% of the functioning in my right leg. I walk, but cannot walk far. I cannot hold my leg up in the air or balance with it. Kneeling/squatting/lunging and other similar activities are completely out of the question.
So what are my options? How does someone like me work out, lose weight, get in shape? That's the point of this blog. My goal is to share my own journey, and hopefully have others like me come along. I'm not the only person with a disability who wants to get my body looking and feeling better, and I know it. It's time that we got together and created our own ways and then shared them with each other. Whether it's recipes, workout moves that target muscle groups and avoid others, safe alternatives for stretching, I want to hear it.
I'll be posting examples of my own, but my hope is to get people reading and submitting theirs too. I'd love to build a network of people who are reclaiming their strength and their health, and doing it on their own terms.
Welcome!
