In the nearly two weeks since I saw the doctor, I’ve changed my lifestyle. A little. In accordance with his instructions. Sort of.

For example, I haven’t missed a day of low-impact workouts during that time. The fact that I have to stop after eight minutes doesn’t negate the fact that I’m making the effort (although it might not lead to any positive results). The very day of my appointment, I came home and looked up exercise equipment online. I very quickly decided that an elliptical trainer for $3,199 wasn’t going to happen, so instead I ordered a $12.99 Gilad DVD from Amazon.

The first morning, I tried to design my own aerobics program, based on what I remembered from old videos discarded years ago. It didn’t work out very well. And neither did I.

But while searching my DirecTV program guide for exercise shows, I discovered that Denise Austin was on every morning on ESPN Classic (channel 208). She’s on at 4:30 am, which is ridiculous, but that’s what DVRs are for, right? So while waiting for my DVD to get here, I’ve been working out with Denise every morning. The shows are from about ten years ago, but I don’t think we’ve evolved enough since then that it would make them out of date. I find her boundless enthusiasm very helpful in the morning.

And I’ve been getting out into the yard in the afternoons, too. I usually last a little longer than eight minutes, and with the heat we’ve had this week, it’s been making me sweat buckets. Somehow I think when I sweat that much, it means something good for my overall fitness. Maybe not at the time, but later.

Nutritionally, I’ve been doing the best I can. The doctor specifically mentioned salads and oatmeal — (as in “I eat a lot of salad,” and “I’ve learned to like oatmeal” — so I’ve been eating a green salad every day and a bowl of oatmeal a few times a week. That’s in the place of some other snack, not in addition to all the other junk I eat (most of which I’ve managed to stay away from). It has to be the maple sugar or apples and cinnamon style, though, or I can’t eat it, which I guess takes some of the advantage away from eating it in the first place. But if the doctor asks, all I have to tell him is that yes, I’m eating oatmeal.