My back is still bothering me. Armand suggested a massage therapist a couple of weeks ago, but I thought I could take care of it myself. However, I’m making an appointment today. It’s really affected my desire to exercise.

The stretching helps my back, but as far as my wanting to ride my bike and work out on my bench step, it’s been tough. Walking is the only thing I’ve been able to do this week. It really does get boring doing the same old thing.

Your back’s sake, stick to the walking and stretching. Since walking is getting monotonous for you, try using headphones so you can listen to music, talk radio or a cassette tape. I do that when I run outside, and it makes the time go by faster.

Be patient with your back and it will get better.

Getting five a day (the total of fruit and vegetable servings) takes some planning. The American Dietetic Association can give you ideas on how to increase the number of fruits and vegetables in your diet. Remember that a half-cup of real fruit juice counts as one serving. Your use of a large salad with cottage cheese helps reduce your daily calories on those days when the other meals have more calories. Also, since your other meat servings this week were higher in fat, such as the shepherd’s pie and Whopper, you balanced the fat intake with the cottage cheese. I would still like you to track your fat grams while you increase the fruits and vegetables.

Let’s take a look at your choices at Burger King. Granted, you didn’t finish what you ordered. A Burger King Whopper with cheese is 760 calories and has 48 grams of fat. A Whopper without cheese and mayonnaise is 510 calories and has 23 grams of fat. A Whopper Jr. without cheese and mayonnaise is 320 calories and has 15 grams of fat.

Selecting the smaller burger gets you the taste without all the calories. By the way, the BK Broiler chicken sandwich without the mayonnaise is 370 calories and has 9 grams of fat. This is the lowest fat sandwich you can get at this fast-food restaurant. The smallest order of fries is 250 calories and has 13 grams of fat.

So, as you hurry to get ready for the holidays, be careful when you stop at fast-food restaurants. I have one client who packs a lunch for her shopping mall trips!

So reports the New England Journal of Medicine in the latest and one of the largest studies yet to put mangled wrists at the top of inline skating injuries. Kids who get off balance tend to break their falls, and wrists, by stretching out their arms. These bad breaks could’ve been prevented by protective gear and a lesson or two in blading techniques, says the study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For 8 months, injury-prevention experts surveyed 161 bladers — mostly school-age children — whose skating spills had landed them in hospital emergency rooms. A third of these skaters had hurt their wrists, most often breaking them — and hardly any of them had been wearing wrist guards. All told, wrist injuries occurred 10 times more often in bladers who skated without their splints (New England Journal of Medicine, November 28, 1996). Still, protective gear can’t make up for lousy skating. In the CDC study, six or more lessons in smart blading maneuvers helped cut down on accidents by as much as 80%.

Some practice and preparation should be done before skaters just take off into the streets,” says John Sarwark, MD, an associate professor of orthopedics at Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago. Newer bladers should learn to crash in grass before they hit the roads, he says, and should learn to always look for a safe place to bail. Don’t even think about street skating until you’ve mastered control, he says.

Even kids who mostly keep things under control can take spills, so Dr. Sarwark offers this crash tip: Teach your child to assume a “Superman in flight” pose, with her arms stretched toward the horizon, and coach her to hit the ground with her wrist guards’ bumpers. Doing this can diffuse the impact on her wrists — as well as defuse a potentially nasty accident.

One monetary step up, but still less expensive than a pair of running shoes, is The Athlete’s Diary from Stevens Creek Software. The Athlete’s Diary is a special-purpose database program designed explicitly for athletes. You can log your training, view it in a variety of formats, and analyze it to plan future training sessions. It has an impressive number of features, and you can save your logs as html files and view them in a web browser.

The product runs on your personal computer and costs $29.99 for the DOS version, and $59.99 for Windows or Macintosh. You can request a free trial version that will hold enough log entries to last a few weeks.

At the high end is the Fitness Tracker from JJA Microsystems. The basic model, selling for $368, offers software and a nifty little hand-held OmniGo computer made by Hewlett Packard. The Fitness Tracker also accommodates multiple users, and the professional version, which is $772, includes billing capabilities and some advanced reporting features.

A unique feature of the Fitness Tracker is its ability to provide immediate feedback on the day’s performance. Enter your performance data, and the program assigns a grade based on how you performed today relative to your past performance.

Fitness is a goal that many of us seek, yet find difficult to achieve. Why?

For each of us, the answer will be different. In fact, before starting a fitness program, it is important to ask yourself: “What makes regular exercise hard for me to pursue?” Your answers could include a busy lifestyle, fear of soreness, or simply “I don’t like it” if you are honest.

Step One: Define Barriers and Get Motivated

Starting a personal fitness plan includes looking at these barriers and deciding how you can deal with them. This includes finding the motivation to begin.

One source of motivation is understanding the benefits to you of physical fitness. These include: aerobic exercise conditions your heart and lungs (and can reduce your risk of heart disease), it increases your endurance (which can help on those long, tough days with a million things to do), it reduces stress, it can help you lose weight, and it can help reduce your risk of disease such as diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, and depression. When you exercise, you look better, feel better, and are healthier.

Step Two: Preparation

Okay, so the benefits sound great. How do you get started?

First, Look at your daily routine. Try to determine the best time for incorporating exercise into it, whether early morning or in the evening. Your schedule and your biorhythm will determine this.

Wear clothing that is comfortable, loose, and permits sweat evaporation. Supportive athletic shoes are good choices for most activities.

Start slowly if you aren’t used to exercise. Check with your health care provider before starting out, especially if you are over age 35, or have any medical problems. They may ask you to modify your plan, such as choosing low impact exercise if you have joint problems.

Step Three: A Simple Routine That Works

A typical exercise routine begins with warm-ups. These are slow stretches that allow muscles a chance to warm up, then a slow start into the exercise itself. Warm up takes about five minutes.

Then comes conditioning exercise.At this point, many people ask, “What kind of exercise is best?” The answer is, “Just about any physical activity that you ENJOY doing.” This is the key. If you find a routine that you like, or is even fun, you are more likely to continue it.

An exercise routine may be a daily walk or swimming, going to the local gym and working out with others, or a private session on the treadmill at home.

Build up gradually, starting out with five or ten minutes a day to prevent “morning after” soreness. You will enjoy yourself more if you allow time to work into a routine, and can add five minutes a week until you meet your goal.

What should your goal be? Minimum fitness is considered 20 to 30 minutes every other day, although you may choose to exercise more as fitness improves.

During exercise, you should be able to hold a conversation (the “talk test”). Slow down if you can’t. If chest pain, irregular heart beats, difficulty breathing, or dizziness occur, stop immediately, and notify your health care provider.

Finally, you will want to cool down. This phase prevents blood from pooling in your legs (which can cause dizziness). Cooling down can be walking, or very low level exercise, followed by simple stretches that relax muscles

With exercise, you can enjoy the benefits of feeling better, looking trimmer, and having more energy. Finding a routine that you enjoy will help you continue it, and exercise your way to a fitter, healthier lifestyle.

I first met Weiss (though I didn’t know it was her) last July to be precise, after I’d been running through the hills and mountains near Aspen for more than three hours along with my adventure racing teammates. Weiss and her companion awaited our arrival in a darkened meadow. The two of them, as volunteers at the X World Cup Adventure Race, had been flown in by helicopter hours earlier to serve as recorders at one of the race’s official checkpoints. We hailed them, thanked them for their volunteerism, and went on our tired way, little knowing that a few years earlier, the woman standing before us had weighed in at 150 pounds heavier than her current weight.

That was before her mother’s premature death prompted her to face the hard fact of her own lack of fitness. Stunned into action, Weiss decided to take control. Through proper diet and exercise, Weiss gradually lost the extra weight. As the weight came off, she found herself enjoying exercising more and more.

“I was really wanting to get into multidisciplinary sports,” she explained. “The main thing was to find activities to help me improve my fitness. I know that if I took up running and that’s all I did, I’d just get bored. Plus I love the mountains. I grew up in Colorado. I love to hike and to backpack, and I just love being up there.”

Weiss’s love of being outside and her pursuit of more than one fitness activity made her a natural fit for adventure racing, which usually incorporates at least three disciplines – trail running/hiking with navigation, mountain biking and paddling. Last March, when she heard about the 2000 sea2summit race that was taking place at Copper Mountain in August, she made it her goal to finish the race.

“I wanted to see if I could do it,” she said.

Weiss entered the two-day stage race (meaning competitors sleep at night) as an individual competitor, but planned to race with a male coworker who had also entered as an individual. As “teammates” the two trained together and supported one another throughout the race. When she reached the final section of the sea2summit on the second day – a mountain biking section – her teammate raced ahead, but Weiss was already elated. Though she hates mountain biking, it was at that point that she knew she was going to finish the race.

Not only did she finish the race, but also, she discovered a new passion and purpose in exercising that went beyond merely keeping fit. Today, at age 42, Weiss is more in shape than ever, thanks to her commitment to racing. She plans to compete in three adventure races and numerous smaller races this year. In addition she has become an enthusiastic promoter of the sport, volunteering at adventure races and working with an adventure racing club, among other activities – in fact, she said, she does something with adventure racing nearly every day.

“I used to say, ‘I don’t run unless someone’s chasing me.’ Now I’m seeing a running coach and thinking about getting involved in 50Ks,” said Weiss, quickly adding, “but the only reason I’m running is for adventure racing!”