‘Rome was not built in a day’ is a popular saying that we have at one point in time or the other used to make a point. So it is with increasing physical activity after many years of being inactive and a sedentary lifestyle. If you are going to start counting your 10K steps a day or more, you will have to start from taking the first step. When I started my weight loss journey at the beginning of the year, I knew that I had to add some exercise to my routine. For someone that had made a lot of noise about saving up to buy a treadmill for use at home for over two years, I knew that if I was truly going to add exercise to my routine, I needed a different plan. I personally do not enjoy working out at the gym; there isn’t that much motivation for me especially when you are struggling to run for up to a minute, and you are surrounded by people who run non-stop for an hour or are lifting weights to build 12-packs. ‘Gymming’, isn’t my thing. I decided to use what was readily available to me, the free road already provided by the government. The beautiful thing about walking or running outdoors is that you must finish whatever you start. You cannot walk 1 km away from your starting point, and decide that you are tired and want to leave, like you would in a gym, get into your car and drive home. You must walk or run back to where you started.That really helps.

Initially, I assumed that having been an active young woman when I was in my teens, running would be an easy thing to do again, as much as I hated to run. So this wonderful Saturday morning (the second Saturday in January to be precise), I got up early, dressed up in running gear and decided to run round my estate. I started off by running and after 2 minutes of running, maybe 300 metres or so downhill, I almost died. It felt as if my chest was going to explode. My shin, particularly the left one, was visibly swollen and extremely painful.  My feet were sore and burning. The pain in my shins was excruciating, and I had barely hit 500 steps. Meanwhile, I set out this wonderful Saturday morning to cover 5K steps for the first time. So I continued walking with swollen legs, a burning chest and nothing but willpower left in me. At a point, I considered calling someone at home to drive down to pick me up as I was not sure I could make it back home. It was hard! Very hard! When I got home, roughly 3,500 steps after, I wrapped my legs in ice to ease the inflammation in my muscles and reduce the swelling. Fast forward 3 months later, and I am comfortably running 2 miles (3.2km) without stopping, and currently planning to extend my run distance to 3 miles (4.8km) non-stop. But it was not always like this!

After that Saturday morning experience, I knew that I had probably overdone things for a starter and needed to take it easy. I was trying to lose weight, not sustain any physical injury or kill myself. But I was not going to stop either. Even after googling what may have caused my swollen shins, which I later concluded was “Anterior compartment syndrome” probably with some element of shin splits, I was determined to cover 10K steps which was my daily goal that I was yet to achieve. After that, I joined my slim and sexy, fit fam colleagues at work to do a 7km walk after work. We decided to do this walk three times a week. For the very first walk, as you can imagine, I was the fattest of the pack, and also the slowest of the pack. I think my wonderful colleagues silently wondered if I could actually make it. Lol! Thanks to one of them who used to be a physical trainer and is also a professional physiotherapist, I made it. But it was not an easy ride. Again, I nearly died, but in a bid to save face, I could not express my fears. The pain was there again, and my friends were gracious enough to stop after every 1km. We stopped at least 6 times that day for Funke to stretch and allow her muscles rest to regain some energy. Geez! It was tough, but because I knew it was good for me, I endured it. Of course, by the time we were back at the office an hour and thirty minutes after, I was the only one dripping with sweat like I had just done my water baptism! The sweating of that day alone must have weighed 1kg. LOL! With my painful, swollen legs, and all the muscles in my body aching, I went home fulfilled and determined to continue to do this for as long as I could. The second time we walked that week, the distance felt shorter, by the third time, I was championing the call to try a different route that would add 2km more to our walking distance. All this time, we just walked, brisk walking, but it worked, and it got less painful each time. I continued to have the ACS though, but I think with the gradual weight loss, the compartment got more loose and created more room for the muscles to expand , so the pain started to ease off.

As I started to walk three times a week, interchanging with my tennis lessons 4 times a week, which meant I worked out every day of the week, my bro-in-law encouraged me to start running. Let me introduce you to my bro-in-law, a seasoned officer of the Nigerian army. We kinda started the whole weight loss  mission around the same time, he, probably a few months before me. Everyday I got home, after my walk or tennis, I would gist my sister of my exercise exploits for the day with excitement. After making noise about how I extended my walking distance to 9km, my  my bro-in-law, who we  call ‘The General’ would ask “Did you run?”. In my mind, I would be like “Egbon, you are a trained soldier, army officer, me I am a bloody civilian who is just trying to lose some weight here, run ke? Mi o le wa ku! (I cannot come and die)”. Of course my response will be more polite…..and was often something like “Run ke? I have not graduated to running yet o! But I will try soon”. The first time I added running to my itinerary and ran about 800m non-stop before my tennis session, I was so happy and proud of myself that I was quick to mention it to him. Then he says, “That’s good, but until you start running at least 5km, you will only make minimal progress”. AH!!! 5km? How? In fact, it was definitely not me he was talking about, right? I was not training for a marathon o! I was just trying to push my body a little and burn excess fat. Truth be told, I only ran because I didn’t want to let my tennis coach down, and I had read in many places that running is cardio exercise which helps to burn more calories and can accelerate the weight loss process. Those were the reasons why I started making an attempt to run. I was barely doing 800m without packing up and here was someone asking me to do 10 times more. Pekele pekele, arugbo je gbese! It’s just so amazing now that I am the same person aiming to run 5km within a week from now. Awesome!

The point of this whole story is to let you know that as you embark on reactivating your physical fitness, be ready to start small. Be ready to start slowly, but don’t stop moving, and continue to push your limits. If you have not done any intense physical activity in a long time, don’t jump on the treadmill or on the road and think you are Mo Farah! Where Mo Farah is did not start today. He did not just jump on the tracks in 2012 for the first time to win gold in the 10K metres race. It took him years to get there. So why don’t you first start walking till you get used to it. Pick a route, and aim to walk 5km a day at least. It’s ok if everyone else around you is an expert in walking or running, in fact it is even better for you. They will push you to complete the walk and return home. Start walking everyday, make sure you don’t quit. Try to complete the walk. As you do it, you will notice that it gets easier and your body no longer aches. Once you are comfortable with your 5km walk, push the bar, add 2 or 3 km to it. Walk for longer in the same amount of time. Before you know it, you will be able to add some running to it even if it is for a few hundred metres, but try to run at some point. Just like me, I thought running was taking things too far initially, walking was good enough. But your body eventually adapts and when it does, you will need to push it just a little harder. The more you push, the more work you give your body, the more calories you burn in the process, the lower your figures on the scale would be!