So I thought I'd write today about one of my absolute least favorite topics -exercise. I know there are people out there who
looooove to exercise, and there are also more than a few people obsessed with the topic. We probably all know someone who talks endlessly about how far they ran that day, or how many carbs they did
not consume or blah blah blah. I'm not taking anything away from their sense of discipline or their accomplishments as athletes, but it's just not my favorite thing to talk about. We all have our little obsessions and I'm sure I could bore you to tears talking about some of mine. If you read here regularly, perhaps I already have-ha!
Anyway, I've always been a pretty healthy person. I was the girl with the toothpick legs and the concave stomach who could eat anything she wanted any time of the day or night. My mother was and still is a good cook, and I grew up drinking milk, eating breakfast even when I didn't want it, and having a salad for dinner pretty much every night. I imagine my mom made salad in order to fill up a growing teenage boy (my brother who made himself a milkshake every single night), but I could eat two bites of anything and be full. Except fruit. It used to make my dad a little bit nuts when my mom would come home with tangerines or plums and I would eat three right on the spot. I still love fruit, and now all veggies too. No more hiding peas in my napkin.
Hi Mom!
I never 'officially' exercised as a kid, and honestly none of my friends did either. Children didn't participate in a lot of structured exercise 'back in the day' partly because we didn't have the availability of sedentary activities to distract us that kids have now, and mostly because we
wanted to play outside. We
wanted to run around our neighborhood organizing big groups of friends into teams for hide and seek or kick the can, to join in spontaneous games of HORSE, and Around the World using a neighbors driveway basketball hoop, to race, swing and play tag . We jumped rope, hopscotched, and rode bicycles for literal miles, and played games like dodgeball and 'chase' during school recess.
Of course we did have organized P.E. and there were units I loved like dance, gymnastics, crab ball...did you play crab ball? A ginormous semi-soft ball was thrown into the middle of two teams and you had to crawl around on the floor like a crab and kick it with your feet trying to score. I'm fairly certain more than one of us took a foot to the mouth in that game, but we loved it all the same. There were certainly parts I hated too like the dreaded rope climb and the impossible (for me) chin ups required for the yearly fitness test.
Today I still love to swim and hike, but those activities are not available to me on a daily basis. I take advantage of them when I can, but at the age of 53, that isn't good enough. I don't care how healthy your diet is, for most of us in the throws of the dreaded M word, unless you exercise regularly, you are never going to feel the way you want to feel. I'm young. Really. I still feel like there is so much life to be lived, and I want to feel good living it, which is why I decided to give boot camp a try.
Boot camp. Sounds awful, doesn't it? I have a friend who's been going, and then last week when I got my haircut, my stylist mentioned she's been going too. She talked about how great she feels, and how much stronger she's grown since she started. That. I want that.
Hubs has his own little boot camp happening in our basement, and he's always trying to get me to join him, but eh. No. First of all, he does the Insanity workout, and it truly is insane. Hubs is probably in the best shape of his life right now, and he loves jumping higher, hitting harder, and sweating more with every workout. True story-he recently went through airport security, and the agent tapped his stomach and asked him what he had under his shirt. He said, 'Those are my abs" and the agent said, 'Wow-good for you!' Pretty much made hubs
year week day.
No agent would be mistaking my abs for anything other than what they are, which is
not a six pack.
Also, hubs works out in our basement, and I'm sure it dates back to some unresolved issue from my childhood, but I just do not like basements. Creepy. Even ours which is practically empty, super clean, and has no hidden corners where humongous spiders or the criminal element could be lurking. Don't tell me you've never had the same thought when you've been down in a basement. My sister and I absolutely hated hearing our mother ask one of us to 'run down in the basement and get xyz from the freezer'. We always went together. Hubs thinks it's crazy, but he didn't have a basement growing up so he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Boot camp. I gave it a try on Monday morning. 6 AM. To some people
that sounds insane, but I'm a morning person and I need my mornings to get things done at home. I was back in my house a couple minutes after 7 so whoohoo! And you know what? It was a little bit fun. Not
all fun, but some fun.
Do you watch The Biggest Loser? Have you seen them working out using those big ropes, where they have to shake them and make them move? I did that. Not as easy as it looks, and I'm sure it wasn't pretty, but I did that and more. Course I can hardly lift my arms today, and I feel certain it's going to get worse before it gets better, but I sort of, kind of, a little bit, liked it. Even though the guy beside me probably did 20 reps for every one I managed, it was still okay.
Today I walked/ran three miles because the trainer running boot camp told me walking would be good for my in between days, plus it was supremely gorgeous outside, so not a tough thing to do on a blue sky day in October. Ask me again when there's two feet of snow on the ground in January.
Listen to me telling you how far I walked! At least I didn't mention the fact that I ate turkey, lettuce, and tomato, hold the bread for lunch-ha!
As an aside, my hubs says as much as I love to think he can't understand why I'm not a marathoner because of all the time and space distance running provides. I tell him that yes I love to think, but when I run the only thing I can think about is how much I dislike running. Truth.
I'm famous for trying lots of somethings (exercise wise) and then giving up before I reap the benefits, but I'm committing to this for the full month, and paying too, which is a little incentive. My goal is to boot camp three days a week, lose a little around the middle, get stronger, and most of all not hurt myself or anyone around me.
That last bit is ambitious. I told my daughter one of the stations involved grabbing a ring in each hand and then leaning back into a squat, and that I managed it all without falling.
She was impressed.
And relieved.
And probably a little bit surprised.
I was too.
