Madonna is Good for your Health

Madonna is Good for your Health

When it comes to fitness and health, Madonna is a role model for many of us. Madonna may have done more to spur fitness than anyone else in the business. (It rhymes).

Any health expert who also knows a little bit about Madonna would tell you that if she’s still going strong is partly because she is damn serious about her healthy habits. And her devotion is one of the reasons why she’s aged so well and is likely to continue aging well in the years to come.

But I’m not going to take you through Madonna’s health and fitness routines here. Instead, I’ll take you through mine.

Starting point: rediscovering Madonna

A year ago, I made a decision to start “moving”.

I’m a web designer and coach who works at home, and very long hours. Until last year, I used to sit in front of my computer for 10 to 12 hours a day. I even used to work weekends, although a few less hours.

So, my lifestyle was not healthy, as you can imagine. Sitting in front of a computer screen for 10 hours cannot be good for your health, neither physical nor mental.

Although I didn’t ingest too many calories (around 1000 – 1200), my weight had been increasing incessantly for three or four years and I had reached a point where I had to do something. I weighed 110 kilograms (17,32 stones). THAT IS A LOT.

I had recently started to get back on track with Madonna, whom I had abandoned for a few years. It was as if I was discovering her and her music for ‘the very first time’ and started to look at her in a new light.

I used to be a die-hard fan – wannabe, if you like – back in the 80s and 90s but then my mom suddenly died and something died inside of me, too. My interest, fandom and love for Madonna went away for years, until early 2017.

February 2017. Because of my line of work, I’m obliged to keep a few mandatory social media profiles, such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. I really do not like Facebook. I find it most boring, intrusive, uncultured and uncouth.  HOWEVER, it was thanks to Facebook that Madonna’s Billboard Speech as Woman of the Year 2016 (one of the best speeches ever by any celebrity, btw) was brought to my attention.

And that’s how it all started.

Walking, just walking, with Madonna

I was touched by the speech and it spurred my interest in Madonna again. I started compiling lots of interviews, music, live performances that I’d missed during all those years, or rather, I hadn’t paid much attention to. I became a stan again. But what I most have to thank Madonna for is that she and her music encouraged me to exercise every day (oh, and to start learning to play guitar, and to perhaps write not one, but two books with Madonna at their centre, but those are different stories).

I realised that every time I played one of her records or any of her tours I wanted to sing, I wanted to dance, I wanted to move!

So I made up a plan.

I compiled a few playlists with Madonna’s best songs and performances to walk, dance or exercise to. I’d walk, just walk, to the beat of Madonna’s songs, 3 times a day (morning before breakfast, after lunch and after dinner), for 15 minutes. Not a lot, right?

When I started to walk, time went really fast, and I ended up walking more than 15 minutes, so I decided that 20, 30, 40 was better. My goal was to walk 30 minutes three times a day, every day. Sometimes I did 40, sometimes 50, sometimes 20. The thing was to keep doing it.

Then, Madonna is good for your Health

Today I’ve shed 45 lbs (20 kilos) and am still going. And that’s why I say that Madonna is good for your health. I hope this time next year I will have lost 30 or 40 more lbs.

Also, I want to give you a piece of advice (if you wish to take it).

When you impose things upon yourself, when you do things only because you need to, or you must, they become impositions, obligations, something you really don’t want to do but feel obliged to. In the end, what will probably happen is that you give up.

However, if you find something, another way, that aims to achieve the same result but truly enjoy, it’s much more likely that you stick to it until you reach your goal.