Shelley A. Sonnenberg

I love outdoor fitness walking! There is nothing like putting on my sneakers and hitting the sidewalk on a regular basis! I also own a treadmill, and I enjoy using it, but there is something special about walking around my neighborhood in the fresh air, greeting neighbors and finding out if they are up to anything interesting. For example, I am always curious to see which houses are getting a new roof, who is having a garage sale and who is moving in or out. I also find it entertaining to see people doing unexpected things like washing their cars and mowing their lawns after dark. (Yes, my neighbors really do that!) I also enjoy seeing birds, dragonflies, butterflies, sunsets and my neighbor’s beautiful flower beds.

Recently, when I was in the process of losing 159 pounds, I spent a lot of time walking around outside and I kept a journal of my experiences. Since then I have taken the amusing stories from those journals and the lessons I learned during that time and put them in to a book. The title is No Salads Required! How I Lost 159 pounds without Salads, Celery, Sit-Ups or Surgery and How You Can Too! It will be available from Amazon.com and other stores in either late summer or early fall of 2015. The book also contains a step by step description of the successful weight-loss program I designed for myself, so that my readers can try it. I hope all of you find it both inspiring and helpful.

One of the nice things about fitness walking is that you can easily do it with friends and family members. Both of my parents walked with me occasionally while I was actively losing weight, and we all really enjoyed it, because we never knew what we might see. Here is a quote from chapter two of No Salads Required! concerning those walks:

“Our neighborhood is built around two ponds and a creek, and water is a major draw to many birds of various kinds. My parents and I especially enjoyed seeing the mother ducks with their little ducklings. We would see them in the ponds and the creek and occasionally walking down the sidewalk or crossing the street. Ducks always put a smile on my face, especially when they did something funny and unexpected. For example, Mom and I noticed one male and one female Mallard duck hanging around our neighbor’s yard when we were walking by. We didn’t pay much attention to them at the time, but a few minutes later, when we walked by again, we saw a freshly laid white duck egg in the gutter right in front of our neighbor’s driveway. There was no nest or anything, just an egg! “

Of course, I also had some interesting experiences when I was walking alone. Here is a story from my book regarding one of those:

“While outdoor exercise does offer the opportunity to enjoy fresh breezes, flowers, trees, and wildlife, it does occasionally come with problems. One day a buzzard pooped in my hair and I had to stop by my house and wash it out! Fortunately, I was close to home when it happened. You can bet I put that episode in my journal!”

Another hazard of walking around outside beneath the blazing Florida sun is sunburn. I have tried all different kinds of sunscreens during the intense phase of my weight-loss program when I was actively losing weight and the maintenance phase of my program that I am in now. Most of them work very well, but there is one factor that can limit their effectiveness. Me! For some reason I really struggle with getting the sunscreen evenly spread on face, neck arms and I have wound up with some very painful red patches from time to time.  The good news is that  I  am getting better at putting on sunscreen and I look forward to the day I can call myself an expert at preventing sunburn and not just an expert at using Solarcaine to treat it!

Uneven sidewalks combined with distractions can be a problem too. Early in my weight-loss program when I was just getting started with regular fitness walking in my neighborhood I was surprised by the bark of a neighbor’s dog and carelessly stepped on a part of the sidewalk that could do with some repair. The result was me falling down quite hard and skinning my knee. You can bet that only happened once! From then on I watched where I was walking no matter what else was going on.

Today, I still do lots of outdoor fitness walking as part of my ongoing program to maintain my weight and I can still honestly say that even though I have tried other forms of exercise, outdoor fitness walking is still my favorite. I especially enjoy walking around the neighborhood with one of my best friends. She lives just up the street and we make it a point to walk together whenever we can. After all, even though outdoor exercise does have a few hazards, they are definitely outweighed by the benefits!