I actually started my “motivation to move” journey January 25, 2006. So I’ve now been exercising 3 to 6 days a week for over two years!

I’m 59 years old. I’ve always struggled with my weight or I’ve ignored it. I worked out at a gym when I was in my late 30s or early 40s. However, the gym closed and I stopped routine exercising. I have skied consistently throughout the years but sometimes only two or three times per season. Also I would walk sporadically from our home in a two mile circle down and up hills. My all-time high weight was 184 in January 2006. (However I hit 165 at the end of my college freshman year.) My low weight was 133 and that was for a few seconds in my early 30s. I’m 5’7” and have always been healthy.

From 2001 to 2003 three people important to me died and I ended up taking care of their estates. In one case, I sat by my friend’s bedside by myself holding her hand as she died. In addition, work was stressful and unfortunately I eat when stressed. Because of all the stress a TMJ problem developed that prevented my mouth from opening more than an inch wide.

So starting in 2003 a great dentist moved my jaw forward non-surgically, stopped the pain, got my mouth open, and did 31 months of braces. I mention the jaw only because it was the first step that I took towards “fitness” and taking care of myself no matter how much effort or time it took.

In 2004 I retired and left some of the stress behind. However, I was still working on estates and there still wasn’t a gym in our area. 

In 2005 I was involved with the care of an elderly colleague who had no family and who had dementia. Watching the struggle of physical therapists trying to get her back to assisted living after a minor stroke changed my life. I realized how importance fitness, especially balance is. The image of this colleague has been my inspiration. I knew she had never been physically fit and I didn’t want to be her in the future.

Finally in January 2006 a local physical therapy facility doubled its space and added a fitness area. One of the options offered was a personal training session or a series of training sessions. I signed up for one training session to learn how to use the machines properly. The last thing I wanted to do was to hurt myself while trying to get fit. I was given a routine at that first session (and I still have it as a measure of my progress).

I did that routine using the various weight machines for a couple of weeks interspersed with the arc trainer or the treadmill. And I was able to relatively quickly increase the weights. But I also realized that I had a long way to go to get fit and that the most efficient route would be to sign up for the personal training sessions which I did.

My trainer is the owner of the facility and a licensed physical therapist which gave me confidence that he wouldn’t ask me to do anything that would hurt me. Since then he has decided that he doesn’t have time to do training so he won’t take any more clients--but he will keep me. And I consider myself very lucky.

At first I did a training session every two weeks and then did some of the activities on my own in between. I could tell that that was about all my body could take.

Now I have one training session per week most of the time. Sometimes my schedule interferes and sometimes his does; we’re both busy.

I have now been doing the sessions for 20 months and the intensity of the workouts has increased dramatically since this past February. Finally I am able to do routines that keep my heart rate up while working on strength and balance at the same time. The trainer aims to work all of my body over the course of the hour.

I go to the gym without a training session two to five days a week and rotate amongst the elliptical, the weight machines and the free weights, using the free weights more and more.

I can’t begin to explain how different I feel and look. And another exciting part is that people at the gym keep asking what I’m doing and why I’m doing it and they are then realizing what differences they can make in their lives. (I’m not making a big deal about myself. Most of the time I’m not aware that they’re watching me and they’re coming up to me.) Many of the people at the facility are older and my gray hair is distinctive so they know I’m not young.

Oops. My husband and I have been married for almost 36 years and he’s working out at the gym too. His progress is a bit slower because he’s not as fixated as I am--and because he’s working 35 hours a week. Any day he works is a 10 hour day so that rules out exercising on that day.

And my mother also goes to the same facility and she’s 87!