Doing the Jepson - Revisited

Saturday, January 10, 2009 When I was at the doctor a week ago yesterday she said I needed to exercise. I told her I did the Jepson (jogged) in the pool for an hour quite often. She said that I didn’t have to go to that extreme and that if I were to get in chest-high water and walk back and forth across the pool for thirty minutes it would be good enough because of the resistance of the water pushing against my body (and arms and hands). I thought I would give it a try. Good grief it is harder than jogging. When I jog the bouncing up and down and pumping my arms causes much less drag and I zip back and forth across the pool. This walking thing takes real effort and works a different set of muscles. A good side benefit is that time seems to go by more than twice as fast as when I jog. Ya hoo. Thus thirty minutes doesn’t seem to be long enough. I have been doing forty or fifty minutes in stead. I hope she doesn’t spank me. Hmm, on the other hand that might be fun. He he. I read in a diabetes diet cookbook recently that weight training “…helps cells throughout your body become more sensitive to insulin. Plus, weight training increases a compound, called Glut-4, that binds to the cell membrane and then helps ease glucose into muscle cells…helping muscles absorb sugar and remove sugar from the blood.” so the last two days, before getting into the pool, I have gone in the weight room and done twenty reps of five or six routines. Though I can really feel it, in total it is less than ten minutes. I think it will make me feel better though my left shoulder hurts. It is the one I had operated on a few years back and I think re-pulled a year or so later. I am left handed but when lifting weights at least, my right arm is stronger than my left. Hmm.