Getting started, part 3: You gotta love it

We've established that, as the first step of our plan to get healthy, we're going to concentrate on exercise before we even think about diet. The big question now remains, what sort of exercise?

Here's one of the many places I'm going to depart from conventional wisdom. If you've looked into starting an exercise program in the past, you're probably aware that many people will advise to follow a specific regimen. They'll tell you to run so many days a week, lift weights at other times, and sprinkle it all with a bunch of crunches and lunges. Or maybe they'll tell you to buy a set of videos or some gargantuan piece of equipment that will solve all your problems.

I'm here to tell you that it's all baloney.

The fact is, you have to find your own path. You have to find some type of exercise that you absolutely love and just do it. If you don't, if you try to follow a course set out by someone else, you're probably going to fail.

For me, that exercise is cycling. Now, I didn't know that it was cycling when I first had the idea that I wanted to start exercising, although in hindsight I probably should have. In fact, I went through several months of trial and error before I found cycling. I tried many different things. I tried walking. I tried running. I tried Tae-Bo and I tried a stationary bike. I even went out and bought a weight bench that, to this day, sits unused on my porch.

Finally, just when I was beginning to think of myself as lazy, I asked myself, "Just what DO you want to do?" I wasn't always this slothful couch potato. In fact, as a kid, I was so active that I was underweight throughout most of junior high and high school (which is something that causes me weight issues to this day, but more on that at a later time). So I started looking back at my childhood, trying to figure out what I used to do before I grew up and became lazy and overweight. And while I did a lot of things, from sports to Scouts to just running around like a maniac with friends, one thing that was constant was that I did a lot of my neighborhood traveling and spent a lot of my time on a bicycle.

A bicycle. Could it really be so simple? I had already tried a stationary bike and found it extremely boring. Even my plan to set it front of the TV to pass the time didn't work. But an actual bicycle ... that was different in my mind. As a child, and even to this day, a bicycle represented freedom. It meant that I could be responsible for getting my own butt across town to play with a friend. It provided challenges, such as popping wheelies, jumping ramps or simply trying to get to the top of a mountain. And coming down the other side of the mountain, it provided speed, exhilaration and adventure.

I decided to give it a try. I went to the local Wal-Mart and, armed with a lot of misconceptions and disinformation, decided to buy a $160 Mongoose mountain bike. Now, I can already hear the snickers from the serious cyclists out there. All I can say is, I didn't know at the time. I looked at the skinny little road bikes and just didn't think there was any way they could support my massive butt.

There were a lot of problems with that bike, starting with the perpetually warped front tire, and including the fact that it just didn't want to shift into about a third of the gears or that it was just so heavy that even gradual inclines were a challenge. But it got me started. And over the next year, I rode it about 800 miles. That probably isn't a whole lot to an avid, who might ride that many miles or more in a month, but it was a major feat for someone who (A) hadn't been on a bike in 20 years and (B) had added over 100 lbs. during that time.

Since then, I've replaced that old bike for something a little more suited to frequent riding, and I ride whenever I can. I look for excuses to ride.

And that's the key to exercise. You have to find something you love, something that isn't a chore to do, something that will inspire you to push yourself farther than you ever thought possible.

You might be like me and find that it's cycling, but probably not. It might be running. It might be swimming. It might be mountain climbing, or canoeing, or weight-lifting. It might even be that exercise video or gargantuan piece of equipment. But something IS out there. Just don't give up looking for it until you find it.

No matter what you might think right now, human beings weren't designed to just sit around, watching TV and stuffing their faces. Maybe you're guilty of that right now, but we're going to work on changing that. And maybe you can't see yourself enjoying any type of exercise, we're going to change that, too. You will ultimately discover that your body loves to move, loves to work.

So for now, just work on finding out what exercise is right for you. Maybe you'll find it by thinking back to when you were a kid.

And if you pick wrong at first, or even second and third, don't worry. Just move on to something else. Keep trying new activities until you find that certain something that makes you say, "This is what I was meant to do."

Now, once you have an activity, what do you do? Well, you do it, of course! But start slow. Here is where a lot of people make a mistake. They get it in their heads that they want to lose 50 lbs. by next month, and they get gung-ho about exercising all the time. But pretty soon, they discover that there just aren't enough hours in a day, and they start slacking off, and they start feeling guilty, and then they just quit altogether, thinking wrongly that it's an all or nothing proposition and, if they can't do it all the time, there's no point in doing it at all.

No, you're going to start slow. And if you're in bad enough shape, that probably won't be a problem. To start, just try to find a half-hour a day, three times a week. No matter how hectic your schedule, that should be pretty easy to do.

Just make sure that half-hour counts. You want to spend that half-hour hot and sweaty, out of breath with your heart racing. Why? Because when you get your heart rate up and keep it up for 20 or 30 minutes, your body kicks into fat-burning mode. And once your body starts burning fat, it doesn't stop for a couple of hours. So you want to make sure you take advantage of that "free" fat burning.

At first, we're looking at three times a week, and you should probably NOT exercise on consecutive days. One key to exercise is that in addition to exercise, you also have to give your body time to recover and heal. So look at a Monday-Wednesday-Friday routine, or Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday.

After a week or two of this, you can add another day if you like. Ideally, you want to work up to exercising at least five days a week, but we're not ready for that yet. Right now, you're just trying to get in good enough shape to exercise.

But as you start out, prepare yourself for pain. If you're doing it right, you should be sore the day after you exercise. Do not let this discourage you. This pain is your friend. This pain is your clearest indicator that you are shedding all of that sloth and laziness from your life. This pain is a badge of honor.

So what are you waiting for? Get busy! But just as importantly, have fun!