Intro­duc­ing Bucket the Wonderdog

Happy Hol­i­days every­one! If your Christ­mas (if you cel­e­brate it) was half as good as mine then you should be very happy! This year we decided to add a dog to the mix– a beau­ti­fully well-tempered dog named Bucket (my daugh­ter named him). Isn’t he adorable?! While we made this deci­sion so that my daugh­ter would have a play­mate, we did so also because of the exer­cis­ing benefits.

We live in as apart­ment and since mak­ing the deci­sion to work from home I have become some­what of a shut in. I home­school my daugh­ter and then work as a writer, web designer, Blog­ging Con­sul­tant, and am co-founder Moms of Hue and the We of Hue Net­work the rest of the time. I have very lit­tle rea­son to leave the house out­side of doctor’s appoint­ments and the occa­sional fam­ily out­ing. This has proven to be dis­as­trous to my health as I have gained weight which is in direct oppo­si­tion to what I need to do. So, the deci­sion to get the dog came from a need to force myself to brave NY win­ters and get my butt and my daughter’s butt outside.

And it has.

We live on the sec­ond floor but have to climb about 35 steps to actu­ally get there– 20 to get to the front door of the build­ing and then another 15 to get to my door. I have been climb­ing those steps twice daily at the least since bring­ing Bucket home. In addi­tion, my daugh­ter and I, along with buddy walk roughly .25 miles when we take him out for his after­noon walk. In addi­tion, in the morn­ing we have begun walk­ing an addi­tional .5 mile and plan to work our way up to 3 miles. As you can see, I have already begun to get more exer­cise since Christ­mas Eve than I have prob­a­bly done all year. All this walk­ing com­bined with my daily EA Active exer­cise (once I get the doctor’s approval to con­tinue) will help me reach my overall goal.

It is so impor­tant to get up an move. I feel bet­ter than I have in a long time because I am forc­ing myself to exer­cise. Those trips up and down the stairs count. The brisk walks of the dog around the neigh­bor­hood count. It all counts and I plan to con­tinue get­ting exer­cise in any way that I can.

What do you do tho get more exercise in?

Orig­i­nally posted on Mom on the Rise