“My back is hurting!  Oh…wait is it my hips? Oh goodness, it’s everything!”  This was me at the beginning of quarantine.    

The biggest contributing factor to reducing and controlling my pain, is movement, and like many of us, I currently have little.

Staying fit right now can be exceptionally challenging, yet extremely important for our mental and physical wellbeing.  Right now, we need to keep our immune systems as healthy as possible, and our bodies strong.  Also, we cannot forget about the stress, anxiety, and depression, that many of us are currently experiencing, and often at high levels.  Movement can help with that.

 I had to find a way to exercise and move while being confined to my home. I looked around my small condo and thought, “What can I do”?  What do my rooms have to offer in place of gym workouts?    

Here is how I compensated.  

I found an old can of paint.  Kettle bells!  Cans from my cabinet became hand weights.  I used my couch and chairs for dips.  

I made additional trips.  For example, when cleaning, I made several unnecessary trips throughout my home.  At times, when I could have made one trip to carry laundry, I purposely carried little laundry at a time, simply to make an additional trip to the laundry room.  I swept and mopped much more than necessary.

I also made use of planks, push-ups, and other exercises, in which only body weight is needed.  

So, look around your home.  Think outside of the ‘household items’ box.  Look at each item with fresh eyes geared toward movement and exercise.  Survey your area.  What do you see?

Move and lift.  Stay healthy.  Stay fit.

The struggle is real! That’s the refrain as we try to figure out the next night’s dinner options.  Normally we are out and about eating to our heart’s content at local restaurants in the Dallas area – the area that ironically has the most restaurants per capita in the country. From fine dining, to fast casual to fast food the DFW Metroplex has you covered.  From seafood, to the famous Texas smoke barbeque restaurants, to the best steakhouses going, to burgers to amazing Japanese, ok Chinese and of course the best in Tex-Mex, we are normally blessed with an abundance of food choice riches.

Well that Rona chick, done changed it all that.  We are now enjoying the abundant choices on just about every food delivery app imaginable, and finding ways to cook has healthy and abundantly as possible. The big take away from all of this is that we find ourselves watching what we are eating much more under these circumstances, be it cooking our own food and being more aware of eating healthy, to checking what restaurants are putting into the food we have delivered.  So while Rona, is indeed a struggle, this struggle is making us stronger in the end, in terms of eating better and more healthy more regularly.  

Of course this presumes you follow all the recommendations on keeping you and your family healthy – masks, social distancing, frequent and thorough hand washing and of course staying in as much as possible.