My love affair with a treadmill
When I was first diagnosed and told that exercise would help I was not exactly thrilled.
All through my school career I had played the compulsory sports and hated every hot, sweaty minute of them.
I swore that once I left school I would never again put myself through that misery and I had pretty much managed to keep that promise!
However the gods must have finally caught on and for their own amusement - it certainly was NOT for mine - visited upon me a disease that required exercise!
Oh well, it was the beginning of a British autumn, the weather was neither too hot nor too cold and taking the required half hour walk along the country lanes where I lived, admiring the changing foliage and collecting my fruit ration from the ladened blackberry hedges was no real chore.
"Great" I thought, "I can do this".
However, winter came on apace and soon the hedges were bare, the weather was cold and miserable and walking along the roads now included ducking into the brambles so as to avoid being splashed as the cars passed.
I remembered why I hated exercise, it was uncomfortable, irritating and just generally horrible and so I slowly found reasons - and they were good ones, I assure you - for staying in my nice warm house with a cup of tea and a good book.
Sounds good doesn't it? It was, until my blood glucose started to creep up and nothing I did would bring it down. I had to admit that all I had changed was my exercise regime. Seems lifting a cup of tea to your mouth cannot be classed as exercise.
So where does one go from here?
Well obviously I was going to have to start exercising again and that exercise was going to have to be done indoors.
There being no gym in the immediate vicinity, even if I had been prepared to brave the 'lycre brigade' I was going to have to get something I could use at home but finance was limited and did not run to fancy gym equipment.
I settled for the only piece I could afford at the time - a mini stepper. The blurb assured me that this would give me an aerobic workout and as we all know that is what we are looking for.
And maybe it would have, if I could have used it for more that 10 seconds.
However, it was so stiff (and there was no adjustment) that just a few seconds of pushing it up and down turned my legs to jelly and there was no way I could go on.
I certainly never got to a stage when I felt I was getting any kind of workout and it made as much impression on my Bg's as lifting the teacup. Back to the drawing board.
After searching the web, reading forums and asking around, I came to the conclusion that what I needed was a treadmill, but have you seen the price of those babies?!!!!!
All I could do was put up with the creeping Bg’s and start saving frantically.
There was also the background worry that I would pay out a large sum on a piece of equipment that I would not use, due to what you must have already worked out as a lack of self discipline when it comes to exercise.
This disease costs us enough in so many different ways, I felt guilty about using yet more of our hard earned money on another white elephant.
Also, like many British houses, our place is small, just 2 bedrooms, and one of those is converted into our office. Where on earth were we going to find room for a treadmill?
Months down the line, and with some financial assistance from my son, who claimed it was in lieu of a belated birthday and Christmas present but was probably an act of self preservation as he had to listen to me wail about my Bg's at least once a week - thank you anyway Noral - I was able to start looking for a treadmill.
Now for those of you out there who are thinking of going this route let me tell you what I have found out about treadmills.
Firstly you need to get a motorized one.
The non-motorized ones are much cheaper but in my personal opinion are no use for the sort of continuous exercise we are going to do.
Below are the features I think you should look for:-
1. A motor of at least 2 horsepower.
2. A speed range of 0 - 10mph
3. An incline that goes from 1-1.5% to at least 10%
4. Make sure the maximum user weight is about 50lbs (20kg) more than you weigh.
5. The belt needs to be at least 40cm wide and around 127cm long.
6. The speed and incline must be able to be adjusted automatically by the push of a button while you are using the treadmill.
Those are the important bits.
You can get added frills.
Such as treadmills that fold up, ones that have all sorts of exercise programs already installed on the computer, ones with heart rate monitors as part of the package etc.
These are nice but not essential or really even necessary and add to the cost substantially.
You will see treadmills listed as ‘entry level’ treadmills.
Do not be put off by this.
Most of us are not training to run the marathon.
In fact we will probably never even run on the treadmill. It is continuous, even walking that we need and these treadmills will be fine.
Back to my story.
I knew I could never afford a new treadmill so started to search the local papers for a second hand one.
A number of machine ads came up and when I saw the names I would go onto the internet and check up on that make, to see if it had the features I required. A few did but whenever I phoned they were already sold - seems the whole world wanted good second hand treadmills.
Eventually I got lucky, there was an ad for a treadmill that was exactly what I wanted, in my price range and just three quarters of an hour’s drive away - and it had not yet been sold!
We booked it fast and arranged to go and collect it first thing the next morning - at what the British consider the civilized hour of 11am.
Being South African we tend to think of 8am as 'first thing in the morning' but after a few gasps of horror over the past couple of years I have learnt to curb my impatience and follow the advice of "When in Rome, do as the Romans do".
Arriving at our destination that morning, I discovered a truth.
My husband had warned me but I did not want to believe him – treadmills as seen in stores or gyms multiply in size exponentially when placed in small houses! This one was set up in the garage and there was certainly no way it was sharing it’s space with even a small family car!
And that brings us to the subject of cars and transport of the goods.
We own a reasonable size car, but it is not a 4x4, a station wagon/estate or even a hatchback, it is a standard saloon.
Both I and the people we were buying the treadmill from eyed the article and our car in disbelief but as I have already said, my hubby had already considered this problem and had brought along the appropriate tools.
To the amazement and amusement of the previous owners (after we had paid them the cash of course!), plus innumerable passers by, he proceeded to strip the machine down to its basic parts on the pavement/sidewalk and so we managed to fit it all in.
Luckily the back seats do sort of fold down, even if not very well. There was a lot of muttered concern about whether we would be able to get it back together again but about that I had no doubt – dear hubby is of an engineering background and this was chicken feed to some things he has had to do.
In case you are wondering then yes, I did ask why they were selling it and the answer was more or less what I expected. It was bought, as all exercise equipment is, with good intentions and to start with lived in the lounge where the lady of the house would get in her daily dose while watching TV.
However redecoration of said room relegated it to the garage where, as one would expect, it was out of sight thus out of mind and served only as a prod to the conscience on the odd occasions she got out the lawnmower.
I had already realised that there was no way I would use it either if it was not in full view at all times so we had decided that it would have to occupy pride of place in our lounge as well, despite the fact that it was not exactly normal sitting room furniture.
Having lugged all the bits into the lounge we were very glad that we had not decided on an upstairs room - be warned, there is nothing lightweight about a motorised treadmill!
Just getting it up the stairs would have been interesting and then would the floorboards have stood up? Possibly, but I would rather not take a chance.
Hubby set about reassembling it in the lounge and it soon became apparent that it would take up at least as much floor space as our 3 seater couch.
This was going to require some serious room rearrangement. (By the way, the cat in the picture is a bit misleading - it really is a VERY large cat, not a small treadmill!)
When you have a room without a single unbroken wall - they are either occupied with a fireplace, a radiator and window, a wall cupboard for cleaning equipment such as vacuum cleaners or doors that open into the room - you can understand that there is little scope for such rearranging.
However after pushing and shoving furniture around into various places, (it took a week or so of tryouts I might add), we have eventually found a way that works and is, I think, actually better than what we had before. So my advice here is "never give up, where there is a will there is a way" and spiralling Bg's sure increase the 'will' bit.
Now came the interesting bit - get walking! I started with the incline at it’s lowest setting, in this case 1.5% and with the speed right down and climbed on.
Not bad at all, but even for this rookie it was kind of slow so I notched it up a bit, and then up a bit more until I was comfortable but not just in stroll mode.
I had decided that I would walk for half an hour a day and this is what I did. To my amazement it wasn’t that bad. "Yea", I thought, "But this is just the beginning. Everything seems great to start with, but how long will it be before I hate this as much as every other form of exercise I have done?"
Well it is a while down the line now and I have an answer to that question.
Do I love exercise? No, I doubt if I ever will, but can I keep this up? Yes, I think so.
The treadmill is certainly the best form of exercise I have ever done.
1. It allows me to exercise at a time and in a place that suits me, independent of the weather.
2. I can adjust it to suit my mood, my Bg needs and my physical abilities.
3. It enables me to occupy my mind with extraneous matters, such as TV or music, that takes my mind off the boring grind of striding along for another mile.
4. And last, but by no means least, it gets results!!!!
It took a few weeks but those Bg’s started to drop and, as long as I do my half hour a day, they stay down.
And what is, for me, even more surprising, my weight has started to shift! Up till now nothing, but nothing I have done has made me lose weight. I may not have gained any but I also never lost any. That appears to be changing - Hallelujah!!!
I have experimented and am still experimenting with what works best for me. So far I have found that an incline of 4 and a speed of 4 -4.5kmh for half an hour works well and means I walk a distance of just over a mile, or 2km.
There have been days when I have been so enjoying the walk (believe me this does occasionally happen, though I would have called you insane or delusional if you had told me so before!) that I have not wanted to stop and have carried on for an hour or more.
There have been times when I have been pressed for time and so decided to speed up and get the same distance done in less time.
I have to say that I have had the best results from the longer, slower exercise than from shorter bursts of strenuous exercise. This bears out the studies that I mentioned on the website dealing with exercise - it is the duration, not the intensity, of the exercise that works best, and especially when you are talking about weight loss.
If I can I do try to walk twice a day, once after breakfast and once after supper. However I work nights and after 8 hours on my feet I really do have to motivate myself into that morning walk.
Also, it has the added problem (considering my circumstances) of waking me up. After 30 minutes of walking one can feel surprisingly energised and awake and that is not conducive to going to bed and sleeping.
So I have found that I have to skip the occasional morning walk in the interests of sleep and job retainment! Falling asleep and landing with ones face pressed into the product is frowned upon.
Another benefit I have found is that the continuous exercise seems to lift depression.
We all have varying degrees of depression at times and I have often read that exercise helps this, but just shelved that idea as yet another push by the health nuts. However I must say that it does seem to help.
The technical boffins will mutter about the reason being serotonin uptake etc, etc.
For myself I don’t care why, I am just thankful, and dashed surprised I must admit, that it does appear to help. Hell, if you are feeling down give it a go, it can't hurt - except the odd muscles that is and they heal soon enough.
I have also experimented with what music works best.
I am not going to give actual advice here. I am a child of the 60’s and what I chose to listen to would have modern folk throwing up their hands in horror.
What I will say is that one needs to find music with a beat that fits in with your walk speed. It makes life so much easier.
Also for me it is dependant on my mood. If I am disinclined to walk and feeling resentful of the fact that I must (I never said it was always sunshine and roses, now did I?) I tend to play music that I enjoy and know well, with words I can sing along to, that will take my mind off my woes.
When I am in a better frame of mind I will choose instrumental music that I can just close my eyes and get lost in. You can walk for ages lost in this space and be really surprised when you come out of it and realise just how far you have gone.
Sometimes it is only the fact that the CD has come to an end that brings you back!
By the way, unless you have incredible balance, when using it like this I would suggest holding onto the handles. I have found that this does not appear to detract in any way from the end result and has innumerable advantages, such as preventing you knocking yourself out on the coffee table when you fall off!
I have tried to read a book while walking but it does not work for me.
My movement relative to the book’s makes me feel sick, but then I am prone to carsickness so this may not be an issue for other folk.
As yet I have not had the opportunity to try out audio books but know some folk swear by them. One thing about a treadmill, it offers you so many different choices.
When I first started walking I did it bare footed.
After all, as stated before, I am South African and shoes are not considered mandatory wear for inside the house in that country.
However, either my feet have become soft from endless shoe use here in the UK or the belts non-slip surface is tougher than they can cope with. Whatever, they soon became very tender underneath and I began to see why the manual advised wearing trainers.
For most folk this will be no problem, you probably have innumerably pairs of trainers amongst your shoe collection. However I had the misfortune to be born with a twisted foot and although it has more or less righted itself now it still makes buying shoes a chore. If they have any sort of closed front the large toe presses against the side and develops calluses. This put trainers out of the running.
Luckily my hubby thought of some well sprung sandals he had seen and we went in search of them. It appears that females do not require sandals with any sort of sprung sole, just great looks.
Males, fortunately, do want such comfortable soles so I managed to find a pair of great and very comfortable sandals in the male section, that do the trick very well.
Comfort definitely comes before fashion in my book! Not that they are bad looking, just not the very latest in bright pink footwear.
Anyway that was goodbye sore feet, welcome walking.
That is the story of my love affair with my treadmill.
I can truly say that in my opinion it is, for the dedicated couch potato who must exercise, the best piece if equipment out there.
There is no way you would separate me from it now, short of telling me I was in perfect health and would remain that way forever, no matter what I did.
Then, of course, I would return with glee to the tea and book - after all, I am not a masochist!!!