(Ryan McGinley)

Confessional time: I don’t exercise right now. Well, I do do my home-yoga at odd hours and walk my dog around the block, but I don’t really sweat or raise my heart rate or anything… That said, for the years leading up to 2012 I hiked, did intensive dance training, twice a day yoga for years and ran like mad.  I’ve lived in a gym and gotten “high” off exercise.  But then other things became more important and away went “exercise.”  I’m super skinny, so what’s the problem, right?  I eat perfectly well.  I am balanced! And after all my proclamations, the facts about exercise intervened:

Your heart needs exercise.  Because I’ve always been skinny, it seemed like exercise was more a choice than a necessity.  In fact, when I don’t do anything, I tend to be skinnier!  My mom was skinny, gorgeous and tragically dead without warning at 66 with 99% of her arteries blocked.  That was a wake-up call.  Our hearts need exercise!

Circulation heals. My brilliant acupuncturist first told me this years ago and its so true…if you don’t move around, your blood and energy can’t move…so you can’t heal well.  Every day our body heals itself from the wear and tear of an average day,  and if you have better circulation, that process will work better.  You will feel more rejuvenated. You will have more vitality.  (Ah the things we forget when we stop running and replace it with drinking tea for energy!)

Strength is more that for your body. Being strong is metaphor for your life.  If you are strong in body, you are more physical capable.  This translates into life more often than not.  My freshman dorm was full of Olympians, and they had a tremendous ability to both work hard and play hard and could endure what someone sitting with a coffee and a bagel (aka, me) could not! Oh, yes, and let me not forget the lecture I recieved from a doctor about how exercise starting as young as possible (walking, running, yoga, weights… almost anything but swimming in this category) will help your bones stay strong for a long lifetime!

Its a beauty treatment! Yep, all that circulation and sweating and detox that comes from regular exercise will de-puff your skin, put color in your cheeks, and raise your overall energy levels which, in itself, is sexy!

And… its a mental detox.  Even though, for most of 2012 I only ran to my car (!) I know full well that the high of a 20 minute run is the most head-clearing enterprise that requires nothing but a pair of shoes and a safe spot to hit the pavement.  No matter what exercise, the act of physically engaging often shuts down that uselessly worrying part of your mind and put you in a more awesome state of happy.

While I can point fingers at spiritual, nutritional, environmental reasons for feeling crappy relatively often, the simplest way to cure things is by making sure the basic “bases” are covered. After waking up a few days in a row with puffy eyes, exhausted and dare-I-say “weak-feeling”, I got new running shoes!  Away we go! 

Do you need to exercise? If the answer is “I have no time” that means that YES, yes, you do need to exercise.  You will find that feeling great will bring you much more time in a day.  Get moving!!!   xoxo Dana

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