Workin' It Out

I read in a magazine that in order to lose weight you must commit to working out at least 50 minutes, five days a week. Actually, the article first said that you needed at least 60 minutes, five days a week. But, with extensive research, they whittled it down to a more manageable 50.

Now, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. Why is is so hard to fit in those required minutes?

It's been my struggle to get them in for the last year and a half, but I'm finally feeling like it's just becoming routine. I'm a morning exerciser. If I don't do it then, all my good intentions of sweatin' it out later in the day just go out the window. I like to shower just once in a day, thank you very much.

My mornings usually go something like this. Alarm rudely awakes me at o-dark-thirty. I contemplate hitting snooze, but usually hit the ground running. Work out clothes on. This must happen before my brain is awake enough to rationalize why I shouldn't do it. Bed made, feed Young One's fish, help him pick out matching clothes that don't make him look like "an idiot", and that's all if I don't have to cajole and coax him out of bed. If I do have to wake him up then it's three seconds of mom really cares and loves you very much and will listen intently but only for these three seconds cause we gotta go go go go go go go go go. (I hate what this is doing to him, by the way, but isn't this life? Well, it is, unless you live on the small Caribbean island of Dominica which D and I once visited. Our tour guide worked one day a week. Um, that'll be three tickets to Dominica...)

Downstairs, start the coffee, empty the dishwasher, load the dishwasher, make a lunch if Young One needs once, feed the salt water fish and the dogs. Run to the stairs periodically to shout encourage Young One to move a little faster. He makes his own breakfast most days, but if I'm feeling extremely Carol Brady that day, I'll do it. Scratch that, Carol just sat with Mike at the table drinking out of an olive green coffee cup while Alice was making breakfast, remember? Back a generation, ah yes, the ever faithful representative of our domestic servitude: Mrs. Cleaver. She made sure her boys got their cholesterol laden first meal of the day.

Permission slips, don't forget that book, "Oh yes, I can't wait for the new Batman game to be released", and "the weather is going to be ____ today" when he asks in order to determine the jacket of the day. We eat breakfast together and usually discuss a few important details of life like just how many Pokemon levels his friends have beaten and who was involved in the latest kickball skirmish with the boy already stuck with the "anger management issues" label at eleven years old.

To the bus stop, "I love you mommy" (I'm still not mom yet. How has that not happened? Clarification: I'm mom in front of friends and in public.) As I watch the bus pull away, I try not to think of another reason why I shouldn't go immediately to work out. Seriously, if it weren't for all the other things on my list on any given day, I'm not sure I would work out. That busy-ness pushes me to hit it quickly. Work out? Big bold check mark, DONE.

Yes we all have the same 24 hours. Yes we all have the same busy lives. It's not about the time. It's about making you a priority.

It finally clicked with me that I'm a better mom, a better friend, a better wife, sister, daughter when I put myself first sometimes. It's not that my working out gets in the way of my life. It's become a part of my day, like brushing my teeth, that I don't think too much about anymore. I don't absolutely love it. But, it's time for me. It's time for me to sweat it out and let my mind wander (cause it does and it's amazing the things I work through while working out!)

This may be a transient thing, like the twenty four hour flu, but maybe I've finally figured it out. Maybe I finally am actually making myself a priority.

Wouldn't that be somethin'?