Get Moving

For years, Jess Anne Cole, an elementary school principal in Clinton, Tenn. (pop. 9,409), put everyone—and everything—else first: her three daughters, ailing parents, graduate school classes. It always seemed she had a church casserole to fix, a school event to host or her daughters’ basketball games to attend. “(My husband) John and I didn’t have any time for ourselves,” she says. “And certainly not for exercise.”

But the years of selflessness had a price: extra pounds and fatigue. At school, she’d think about how long it was until bedtime. When teachers brought goodies, she’d munch mindlessly. She scolded herself for gaining weight and not exercising, but was reluctant to start because the task ahead seemed overwhelming: the diets, the food diaries, the strength-training and strenuous regimens she’d heard about but never tried. “When you’re not living healthy, it seems like such a hurdle to get back on track,” she says.

A lucky convergence of self-disgust and wisdom changed that. One day two years ago, just after school let out, she heard the U.S. surgeon general mention on television that everyone should “move” at least a half-hour each day. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s simple. Surely I can give myself 30 minutes a day.’ I also knew it was important to do weight-bearing exercise to prevent osteoporosis,” says Cole, who at 53 is a prime candidate for the age-related bone loss associated with declining estrogen levels.

Cole dusted off a treadmill she’d bought years earlier, vowing to walk 30 minutes a day for 30 days. If she stuck to the routine that long, she thought, she’d have adopted the exercise habit. Dressed in pajamas and tennis shoes, she hopped on the treadmill every evening after school, walking at the machine’s slowest speed.

“It was so hard. I felt like I was hauling logs,” she recalls. “I didn’t know a person could sweat so much. But I took the decision-making out of it. I thought, ‘It’s like going to work every day: you just have to.’”

To her surprise, the drudgery of walking started getting easier: she wasn’t sweating so much and she could go faster. For 30 days she never missed a day—and she noticed she was feeling better, was less tired and was losing weight. She began exercising 30 minutes outside each day, mixing walking with a few minutes of jogging. Within several months she started entering organized runs and walks, culminating in a half-marathon that her husband ran with her. “I’m often the last one, and I can tell the officials want to go home,” Cole says. “But my husband says, ‘Jess Anne, you’re off the couch.’”

Besides, she knows she’s done her body a favor. In two years, she’s lost 40 pounds, and stronger bones are a less visible byproduct of her new healthy lifestyle.

“Exercise like walking or jogging is particularly important for women as they age, since the loss of estrogen is associated with a rapid loss of bone tissue,” says Dr. Kerry J. Stewart, director of clinical and research exercise physiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. Studies have shown that weight-bearing exercise can markedly reduce bone loss in postmenopausal women—or even build bone and make them stronger as they adapt to the stress of exercise.

Although Cole still takes blood pressure medication, she says walking up stairs isn’t as difficult as it used to be. “I haven’t turned into a runway model, but I feel younger and stronger, and have tons more energy,” she says.

Homesick for the camaraderie she missed when her half-marathon training was over, Cole and a friend started a local exercise group that now numbers 40 members. The “Go-Go Girls” walk and run at 8 a.m. each Saturday, followed by a coffee hour. “Now I try to surround myself with people who are moving,” she says, noting that she can’t return to her sedentary ways.

“Moving affects everything,” she adds. “It does as much for your head as your body. It keeps you balanced, with an I-can-do-it attitude. I can’t sit and knit the rest of my life. I’ve got to keep moving.”

Story by Dorothy Foltz-Gray of Knoxville, Tenn.

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