Finally got off my butt today and went for a walk around town with my son. We took the long way, and dropped off some library books on to discover (horrors!) that it wasn’t open this early on a Sunday morning.
He’s asked if he can go back later to pick up some books. Hmm… Let me think… <grin>
I’m trying to encourage him to be more independent, so I’m sending him by himself, even though I could use both the hangout time with him and the walk.
I talk about fitness a lot in my blog, but to be honest, I am quite sedentary by nature. I don’t get spazzy from sitting all day, and I’m perfectly content in my writing chair all day knitting and writing. It makes it difficult to motivate to move.
The problem is, if I do that for too long, I start to hurt, and then it hurts to walk and then… Well, you get the picture.
It’s gorgeous today — about 25 F and a bright sun in a cloudless sky. So, a perfect day for a walk instead of a swim.
I’m still exercising in fits and bursts rather than consistently. Certainly the fits and bursts are better than nothing, but I’m feeling the lack of resistance training, especially in all the joints from my hips down. I need to be better about weights if for nothing more than to have the physical stamina to be on my feet all day when teaching a class. When I was working at Hogworts, I was getting in those 10,000 steps a day without even thinking about it. I couldn’t park any closer than a half mile from my office. I worked on a campus, so I was all over the place. And for the last year I was there, I was quite good about the swimming and weight training. I think having a slot that was the only slot I could get my exercise in was actually better for me in a lot of ways. The “Now or Never” mindset was a real help in motivating me.
Be that as it may, I really want the benefits of working out, and the way to get them is to (and stay with me here) work out. I know, it’s a crazy and radical though, but it’s true!
I’m gonna go back to the swimming three days a week and weight training three days a week first thing in the morning. I liked the schedule and stuck with it longer than anything else. I’m bumping my swims up to a mile, though. I need the longer workout, and well… I can! I like that a lot. Because my cardio is swimming, my weights are gonna be concentrating hard on lower body and not quite so hard core on upper body. You can’t beat distance swimming for upper body strength building.
I’m going to go back to doing at 5:30 in the morning, because I want the habit developed for the days I’m teaching as well as the days I’m not. I often blow off a workout when I am teaching and I don’t want to blow off workouts on busy, out of the office days. So, I’ve got a couple of weeks to really build the routine before I hit the classroom again.
It’s a constant struggle to stay motivated to stay active, and I’m not just talking about the “getting skinny” bullshit. I mean staying active enough that I’ve the physical energy to do my day, accomplish my goals and feel good emotionally. I oughta put that first. I’ve never in my life had as good of results from an anti-depressant as I have from regular workouts. Special Snowflake, that’s me. I’m all delwikite and have to pump some iron or I get all weepy and emo. But it is a struggle to stay active. I generally love how I feel after I’ve gotten the heart rate up good, but I’m immature enough that it’s often difficult to remind myself that dragging my ass out of my chair/bed/whatever and getting moving is a good thing. The thing is, it’s not a “do this today and a year from now you’ll be glad you did”. Oh, no. I get the emotional results in less than an hour. How’s that for impatience and foolishness when it comes to difficulty of motivation? LeSigh. Maybe I’ll grow up someday.
But, I will have my rear in the pool tomorrow morning at five thirty. I can certainly make myself do that much!