And then I figured out exercise was going to kill me...

Bootcamp. I had heard tales of people doing horrendous and terrible things like running, uphill, in the rain, with 50lbs packs on their backs and then doing 20 things called Burpees. It seemed like something I would NEVER do. But then my friend Bill's wife, the Lovely Lecia, completed a personal trainer certification process, and decided she would start a bootcamp. So I said to myself, Self, you need to challenge your overweight, out of shape self. Surely the Lovely Lecia would not try to kill you. So I signed on.

And surely she only tried to kill me a bit. It was one hour of activity a week. I figured I could almost anything for an hour, and I was right. I was by far the oldest person in the group DOING the exercises (Lovely Lecia and myself are the same age) and definitely the most out of shape. But I did it. I was jogging, doing push ups (the girly kind), and the dreaded Burpee. For the uninitiated, and I was or I would not have signed on, the Burpee is something from real bootcamp. The Bob was intimately familiar with these from his Marine Corp days. You drop into a squat, then you are supposed to jump your feet back into a plank position, do a push up, jump your feet in, and then JUMP to an upright position. MidLyfeMama did things at half pace. I walked my feet back, did a sort of push up, walked my feet in and stood up. I don't jump. Unless there is a spider involved. Then there is a lot of jumping and possibly screeching. It is my Achilles heel.

That was like, 4 months ago. No so coincidentally, I have come to figure out, 4 months ago I began really struggling with IBS issues. Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It was also a time that was rather stressful at work, so I thought it had to do with that. I changed my diet, eliminated the trigger foods. Nothing helped. Saw my doctor, ran blood tests, found nothing of consequence, except maybe a wonky thyroid, which will be addressed, but nothing to explain the gastric distress. And it was B.A.D.

Then by virtue of a crazy schedule and a random migraine, I had two weeks off from bootcamp. And my symptoms abated. But then it was back to bootcamp last week. And LO AND BEHOLD, symptoms, back.

I will not describe my particular symptoms, but I really wanted the angry badger that had moved into my colon to move out. And I finally put two and two together. The intensity of the bootcamp workout is causing my issues. There is some documented basis for this idea, as I found when I googled "Exercise causing gastrointestinal distress". Something to do with the intensity of the lower body exercises, and the prolonged increased heart rate.

So I had a talk with the Lovely Lecia, and I am off bootcamp for now. We will work together on making my 30-40 minute morning workouts more effective, but not too intense, with minimal lower body stress, i.e. no damn Burpees.

The moral of the story: Exercise is bad for you.