Stairway to Heaven???

I swear I will write about other stuff soon, but I am really not all that exciting right now.

Part of my little weight loss journey has been trying to work little workouts into my day. I work on the 7th floor of a 10 story building and for pretty much the whole twelve months I have been here I’ve always thought doing the stairs would be a great little thing to do for myself. But that’s as far as it every got, thinking about it. About a month ago I finally put the thought into action and I have followed through with it about 4 out of 5 work days since then. I'm lying, really about 3 out of 5 work days.

I know what you're thinking, big deal, right? 10 flights, that’s not much I could probably end up doing them twice. HA! That has yet to happen, but is still a goal. These are huge flights of stairs, I work in a building that houses furniture showrooms and has very high ceilings on each floor, I’m pretty sure the 10 flights are more like 15 to 20 normal ones…or at least this is what I tell myself.

I thought I'd share how much of a process this 15 minute work out is for me. It starts at lunch. While I am sitting alone in the kitchen I think about the 1 point soup or 6 point Lean Cuisine I am eating and remind myself of what the scale said that morning. And at some point convince myself that doing the stairs will accelerate the process and I won't have to count points forever.

So around 3pm I fill up my cup with water and turn off the space heater at my desk. These two tricks took me a couple of trial runs, but they make the cool down process much better. My system is that I go down the first 7 flights as the warm up, get my heart rate going stage. Then I climb straight up all 10. This is obviously the hard part and it is usually the 6th floor that I start getting dizzy and can’t breathe right and start convincing myself there is mold in the stairwell and the workout is hazardous to my health. I also think about how embarrassing it would be if someone else used the stairs and saw me wheezing my way up them. Fortunately Houston is lazy and I have never actually seen anyone else in the stairwell.

So once I have run through all of this in my head I usually suddenly find myself on the 8th floor and I think about the girls on the Weight Watchers message boards that have stats in the 200's and figure I can go ahead and do the final two flights. At this point my gross motor skills seem to fail me, I keep having to turn right to go up and my legs are in a groove but every now and then when the dizziness gets to me I kind of miss a step or hover my foot above the step to make sure it's there. Seriously, how out of shape can I be...mentally and physically?? I blame it on the repetitive-ness of watching the little green skid strips passing me by with each step I climb.

Once I'm on the 10th floor, I slide back down to 7 and make it back to my desk with wobbly legs. I chug my water, fan myself down the front and back of my shirt and hope I don't have to answer the phone before my panting subsides.

I do actually like this routine, and today I am going to try to do it twice, once in the AM and once in the PM...but if you have any ideas on any other mini workouts I'd love to hear them!!