When I was in my 20s and saw the older folks (they must have been at least 35!) doing yoga at the first gym I joined, I thought “why would anyone ever do THAT?” It looked so boring and the opposite of a workout. Today yoga is my favourite form of physical exercise. I like fast yoga, slow yoga, hot yoga, room temperature yoga, yoga classes, yoga at home, long yoga sessions and short yoga sessions. It is way more of a strength workout than I ever imagined it could be. Second to yoga as far as “exercise” activities are swimming, resistance training, and running. But I also love walking.
Nicole
Anything that takes me out of my head and makes me feel positive – usually running or lifting weights.
Mina
So hard to choose–tight race between trail running, mountain biking and cross country skiing! You can sense the theme–an activity in which the earth is directly beneath my feet, unmitigated by concrete or a building floor. And open sky above my head; blue, cloudy, snowy and most other conditions.
Martha
Oddly enough, it is cleaning the garden. While I love training with weights because of the focus, I get immediate gratification from seeing the impact of my efforts in the garden, and feeling the hard work that I need to engage in for those results. I’m not wafting about like some Victorian matron snipping a rose here or there for the luncheon table. I’m moving pots, clipping unruly weeds, hauling waste, and bags of dirt.
Sam
Riding bikes, obvs.
Cate
This is such a complex question. It’s about whatever shifts me from stuck in one gear, grinding up a hill in a too-low gear, to being in flow and generative regard for my self and soul. Sometimes it’s disciplined, like a strength workout at the gym, or a planned run or ride in zwift. And sometimes it’s just like remembering to breathe and tuning into my body in found moments. Like I was walking back after dropping off my car to get the winter tires put on this morning and I let myself become deeply aware of how the crisp air made me feel alive and awake and strong. That’s what I love.
Elan
Dancing! 🪩
Christine
Taekwondo and yoga are my favourites but dance – goofing around to music rather than something choreographed – is pretty fun, too.
Diane
I like activities that involve precision; things like dance and swimming where the exact angle of my wrist or my hip position makes a big difference to my performance.
Ok, so they aren’t all that spooky but I thought you might like to try one (or more!) of these themed workouts that I found recently.
You’re going to workout anyway so you might as well maximize your fun, right?
Speaking of maximizing my fun, here’s a drawing of a skeleton on a skateboard that was part of a drawing challenge I’m doing this month.
In this still image from Kate Carmela’s YouTube short she has her arms outstretched and her feet apart while standing on a blue mat. There are some pumpkins, a lantern, and a replica of the ‘Audrey’ plant from Little Shop of Horrors in the background. The instructor is wearing all black, and has black hair that is partially pinned up in buns on the back of her head and she is smiling. Her shirt says ‘If you’ve got it, haunt it’ and her pants are deliberately ripped and shredded from just above her knee down to her ankle. In the upper left is text reading ’60s Dracula Step Out.’
In the still image from “get spooked with this Halloween dance workout“ from Kate Carmella the instructor is standing in the centre wearing black workout clothes and pretending to be scared. The background is purple with orange highlights down at the bottom. There are a variety of plants within the orange highlights kind of casting shadows on the back wall, there are bats and clouds up at the top and there’s an image of a ghostly sort of mask in the upper right hand corner.
The still image for this Halloween/Samhain yoga class for all levels by Nourished Natasha is divided in two parts. The right hand side has an orange background and black sections with the title of the video in white. The left-hand side shows the instructor back on in a black halter top and dark red leggings. She’s leaning to the right with her right hand on a block and her left hand in the air doing what seems to be an adaptation of triangle pose (there are several poses that look similar to this that I get mixed up.) in the background or a variety of esoteric Halloween props that reference tarot, fortunetelling and palmistry.
The still image for this Fun and Easy Beginner Level Chair Exercise video from OT Sara for Seniors features the instructor sitting on a chair in front of a fireplace in the daytime with some plants in the background on either side, a black cat decoration on the floor on her right and a stack of pumpkins decoration on the floor on her left. She is wearing cat ears and a top that seems to be leopard printed and black pants. She’s wearing a headset microphone and she has both of her arms up on the right hand side and I think she’s doing some sort of like cat paw motion with them.
This image from Phoenix Physical Therapy’s Instagram shows a list of activities to do in a circuit. The background is black. There are two green zombie arms reaching into the middle of the image, there were cobwebs in the upper corners and text at the top says Halloween Survival Workout. the list of activities are as follows: Zombies run! 30 seconds fast feet, flying bats – better duck 15 squats, hold very still – 30 second plank, zombies again- 30 seconds fast feet, jump over the graves -10 tuck jumps, stay low to the ground – 10 push-ups, try to sneak by – 10 walking lunges. Oh no here it goes again repeat three times.
This weekend, my ongoing efforts to maximize my fun and my current specific efforts to increase my fitness levels* overlapped nicely when I saw that the Conqueror Virtual Challenges had a walking challenge related to the Salem Witch Trials.
Is this kind of a weird and tenuous connection? Yes.**
Am I heavily influenced by themed activities? Also, yes.
The challenge involves walking around 48kms over a self-determined period of time and in the course of the challenge I’ll ‘unlock’ historical information and locations relevant to the trials.
The connection to a real place and to historical events and the fact that I will ‘earn’ interesting facts by reaching certain checkpoints does add to my fun and it gives me an extra reason to keep moving.
Once I signed up, I received my ‘race bib’ which was pretty fun since I have never had one before – digital or otherwise.
Image description – My ‘race bib’ for the challenge which shows my number 03023 in black against a light purple background. My sign-up date ‘Oct 24, 2025’ is above my number and 30 mi / 48 km is below. The light purple background featuring the number is surrounded by a darker purple night scene which shows wrought iron gates, bare tree branches, and two fenceposts with lamps on them. There is a witch on a broom flying in front of a full moon on the upper right, my name is in the middle top of the image, and ‘The Salem Witch Trials’ is in green on the upper left. In the bottom centre are the words ‘Make Every Mile Count.’
I mean, I’m not racing anyone in any real sense of the word. I set my own timeline, I’ve given myself tons of time to complete the challenge, and I’m not part of a challenge group.
Really, my only competitor is me.
Yet, immediately after signing up for this, I was inclined to go for an extra walk because it was part of a bigger project.
Yes, I know that all of my fitness efforts are related to a bigger project – a happier me – but this challenge has predefined goals, obvious milestones, and there’s a definite end point. And I didn’t even have to put in the work to figure all of those things out.
Also, at the end of the challenge, the company will mail me a medal*** which will be a really cool bonus for doing something that already has inherent benefits.
*Yes, increasing my fitness levels has also been an ongoing project for me but after the necessary slow-down to recover from my injuries last year, I have been finding it hard to get back into a good fitness rhythm.
**In case you are wondering, I have, indeed, already done some overthinking about this. After considering it for some time, I felt that since it is focusing on mapping distances/locations and it gives contextual information, this challenge wasn’t particularly exploitative and it wasn’t dismissive of the situation or of the people involved.
**My husband did one of the Conqueror challenges last year and the medals – longer challenges have more than one – were delightful so I am looking forward to receiving mine.
Aquafit is a great activity but I am having complicated feelings about it.
I first enjoyed aquafit way back in university, in the early 1980s. It was a deep water class, almost like HIIT but in the water.
Now that I’m lifeguarding, I notice a very different dynamic. These days, it’s almost all older white women, many of them with mobility issues, judging by the poolside collection of canes and walkers.
At best, there about 30% men in a class, but that’s rare. Usually the ratio is closer to one in 10 (or none at all) in the classes I guard. People of Colour equally rare, as are people under the age of what I’m guessing is about 50.
Why is that?
Generally, aquafit is pitched to older women, with popular American music from the 60s and 70s. While a few older men may join in, it often seems to be because they are addressing a specific medical issue or recovering from surgery. But no younger, fitter men join, perhaps because it is perceived as a “women’s” activity. People of colour, who are often newer immigrants in my area, may not feel a connection to the music that the majority loves to sing along to.
The timing of classes could also be an issue. They are offered during the day, when retired people are more likely to be available. Earlier and later in the day there is competition for pool time with swim clubs and lane swims, possibly because because more of those swimmers have to get to work or school.
We could change the perception of aquafit as being an easy, social activity for elderly women. Some places do offer intensive aquafit, but it doesn’t seem to be an option where I live.
Or maybe I could just learn to accept that these women enjoy having their own space, where they can sing, or chat, or work as hard as they want. This Guardian article has a lovely description of the joys of aquafit.
A photo of older women at an aquafit class, from the Guardian article mentioned above. Photograph: Barbara Alper/Getty Images
Maybe not every sport needs to be all things to all people.
Or maybe we need to have more male or visible minority, instructors and more classes at times that work well for the people who currently aren’t participating.
Or maybe we just need more sports facilities. I can dream…
Here is one aspirational daily habit list (not mine):
8 hours sleep
7-10k steps
15 minutes outside
Meditation
120g of protein
8-10 servings of fruits and vegetables
Drinking 8 glasses of water
Strength training
Stretching and mobility
To this list, I want to add reading fiction, writing, staying in touch with friends, physio, cleaning and tidying my house, and walking Cheddar, my dog. Also, there’s taking my daily medications, taking creatine, and doing Duolingo and Wordle. Also, gratitude posting.
It feels like a lot!
But then there’s the oddball recommendations.
Eating six prunes for example, for better bone density. (I’m hoping they at least count as one of the servings of fruit and vegetables. I’m sure they do.)
And then there’s Google’s list. It mostly overlaps with mine with the added work of making your bed, which I usually do. It’s just not a habit I care enough about to track. I feel that way about washing my face, applying skin cream, and brushing my teeth. These are also daily habits but I don’t even need to think about them and I definitely don’t track them.
What to make of all these daily ambitions?
There are times in my life when tracking daily habits works well for me. There are times when it makes me want to scream. Sometimes my day already feels so full, I can’t imagine adding one more thing.
Daily writing mostly works for me as an antidote to the feeling that I can only write in big, dedicated chunks of time, and very few chunks of time exist. Small amounts make a difference, and they add up. Ditto daily movement.
But reading? Cleaning? Talking to friends? They’re more like “pick one and add it to your day.” I don’t need to do them every day. And I’m not so sure I could eat six prunes every day.
How do you feel about tracking daily habits?
For me, it all just depends.
Some days I feel like taking Cheddar for a walk through our neighbourhood which is lit up with bright autumn colours and not worrying whether that counts as daily movement and time outside. It just is what it is and that feels good.
CW: mention of some extreme (but real) health injustices and harm done to people and groups because of it.
This past week was a full-service one for me: after two days of teaching, I flew from Boston to Portland, Oregon for the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities meeting. This is a group of medical professionals, including clinicians, directors of programs, patients’ rights lawyers, clinical ethicists working in hospitals, researchers, and a smattering of philosophers.
I was there to give a talk on GLP-1 (weight-loss) drugs and the complexity of hunger. This is one of two health ethics projects my friend Norah and I are working on these days. More on that in another blog post.
Here are some of the fascinating and important topics people are working on that I Iearned more about:
pregnancy in prison, and the practice of shackling pregnant people during labor and childbirth
how ranking hospitals (e.g. US News rankings) can affect medical policies around managing cancer care
what we can learn from our dogs about euthanasia and end-of-life care for ourselves and our human loved ones
what’s so special about cancer: opioid prescribing for pain and the need for improved and more consistent guidelines across diagnoses
I met lots of interesting and nice people (including a bunch who live in the Boston area) and also saw some colleagues I hadn’t run into in a long time. It was great to see bioethicist Peggy Battin, who is famous for her work on assisted suicide, among many other things. She gave a powerful TED talk in 2014 on her experiences around her husband Brooke’s death five years after he suffered a broken neck in a bike accident. I regularly show this to my students in my Contemporary Moral Problems class during our module on end-of-life ethical issues.
Because we were in Portland, Norah and I had to sneak away from the conference for a couple of hours to go to the Portland Japanese Garden. We were treated to fall colors as well as the varied shades of green in the moss and leaves.
Orange and yellow leaves.Reddish-oranges and greens.Curved tree with yellows and green.
There was a bridge/walkway over and around a pond with large and beautiful fish, several other water features, and a lovely zen garden, carpeted with white Canadian rocks.
fish of many colorsA bamboo and stone water feature.A zen garden.
You may be wondering, what about that llama? Yes, there was a llama– Caesar, the no-drama llama, a prominent Portland celebrity, visited the conference on Friday for a meet-and-greet and photo ops. If you want a moment of respite from our harsh world, look at the video of Caesar here.
Norah and I of course got our pictures taken with Caesar. He is sweet and calm and oh so fluffy!
Me and CaesarNorah, Caesar and me
Everyone gets tired occasionally, especially when they’re the object of so much attention. Caesar is capable of extraordinary ranges of emotion, and his yawn is a sight to see.
Yawning or singing? You had to be there to know for sure.
Despite two cross-country flights, I am feeling refreshed and energized, ready to continue my research work, pursue more fall nature, and keep an eye our for fluffy animal encounters.
Readers, how was your week? Did you get to pet any nice creatures? Stroll through nature? Expand your mental horizons? I’d love to hear from you.
It was a windy, wet day on Wednesday for the inaugural Plane Pull for the Elgin-Middlesex United Way.
I was part of a 15 person team. I really enjoyed getting to know new colleagues at Canada Life. We had fun sharing strategies and preparing to be the fastest. Our pull was 10:55 seconds.
15 people whooping it up as they pull a plane.
The winning team was less than 9 seconds!
Why do this stunt? The goal is to show that a small group of people working together can accomplish amazing things.
It’s important to remember that we can take steps to address social problems. It is easy to give in to despair when faced with big problems.
I loved the competition and camaraderie.
Nat smiles at the camera despite the wind and rain.
I’m at workout #319 of the year and there are 68 days left in 2025.
Let’s do some quick math.
If I do some intentional movement everyday that’s 387 workouts. I’m aiming for 400 so to get to that I need to do that twice on 13 days. I had considered moving the number down to 350 but that probably isn’t necessary.
I think I can do 400.
Here’s some of my workouts this past week:
Walking to workNight time dog walk
Dog walkBike commutePersonal training at the gym
Really this was just an excuse to share some pretty fall pictures. Enjoy.
