Memories of Fitness Past

The Olympics can be a great motivator, sometimes.

No I won’t be training for any special events any time soon.  Watching all of those extremely fit people has, however, ramped up my motivation to exercise.  I wish I could say it was hampering my desire to eat-not as much.  I lost my resolve with the apple pie and the chocolate malt.  I can blame my husband for that-he brought the pies home from church and made the malts.

I used to be very fit.  I used to get up at the crack of dawn and walk an hour and a half almost every day.  I used to ride my bike from one town to the next.  I used to go to the gym and lift weights like crazy.  I used to be a vegan.  This is before I had kids, of course. I also used to subsist on next to nothing.  Now I don’t desire to ever be a size 0 again, but it would be nice to be able to find an exercise program and stick to it.  It also would be nice to regain the willpower I had all those years ago.  I could actually REFUSE things back then!

(By the way, not me.  I never owned legwarmers.)

I blame kids and chocolate.  This isn’t an accurate representation, because I don’t like to share my chocolate.

Right now I really need to go to the store to buy some healthy things to eat.  I can’t because my husband doesn’t get paid until tomorrow, and because I don’t want to drag the kids there.  So I’ve been eating what’s left in the house.  Lunch consisted of a microwave brown minute rice bowl (the rice was brown, not the bowl) that I found underneath the pantry shelves and three cherry tomatoes.  Later on I found half a red pepper in the freezer, so I ate that too.  You’re thinking “Hey that’s pretty healthy!”  Not really.  The handful of dark chocolate M&Ms didn’t help.  I’m starving to death and I don’t know what the heck I have left to eat that is actually good for me.

Since I did get the smartphone that I’m not sure I needed or deserved, I downloaded a couple of apps recently. One was an app that supposedly helped you keep track of your calorie intake.  What it really does is make you feel really bad that you can’t subsist on 1200 calories a day.  I did pretty well at first (not at subsisting at 1200 calories but at just remembering to enter in everything I ate) but then just kind of forgot about it.  I also downloaded an app that supposedly tracked how far you walked and posted your route, time, etc on a nice little map.  Noooooo, not quite.  Apparently I live too far our to get a good GPS signal.  The first time I used it I was really excited because it said I walked over 5 miles!  That was because everywhere I went it showed me walking in and out of the cornfield by our house about 50 times on the almost hour walk, adding about 3 miles on to my route.  I was pretty bummed when  I realized that.

I tend to do fairly well until the afternoon snack.  Then it’s all downhill from there.  Dinner is frustrating.  I would much rather make myself a small pan of pasta with tomatoes and a little cheese and that would make me perfectly happy.  Instead I must make everyone else happy.  My husband thinks that meat is the key to happiness.  Everything must have gobs of meat.  Meat meat meat.  Heaven forbid if I make a meatless meal.  AND CHEESE.  I have a problem with lactose, so I try to avoid putting a lot of cheese on things.  He will insist on using a whole package of cheese in a meal.  Vegetables?  I make them and he avoids them like they are radioactive.  Add to all of that the fact that he has to put down the computer to come eat, many nights he eats way after we do (we are horrible people because we do not have a dining room or a dining room table, but the kids eat AT a little table.)  And don’t even get me started on the kids.  My son would be perfectly happy eating hot dogs and chicken nuggets every day for the rest of his life.  He hates pasta, he hates rice.  My daughter likes a variety of foods, but when it comes to supper it’s hit or miss.

So often I end up eating most of the stuff that I made to make the other people happy because they didn’t eat it.  Or didn’t eat much of it.  I hate wasting food, and no one in this house seems to understand the concept of leftovers being anything other than a decoration for the inside of the refrigerator.  Often I eat too much at dinner to try to avoid having leftovers.  Sometimes instead of a healthy lunch I eat the leftovers.

Don’t tell me to make less food.  I’ve tried that.  My husband acts like I am trying to kill him.  Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t!

This weekend while watching the Olympics I started going through all of my old Women’s Health magazines and cutting out the 15 minute workouts.  I did one of the ab ones yesterday.  Ok, I did the exercises that I could do.  I couldn’t do any of the ones that consisted of balancing yourself on a stability ball with your hands (come on, NO ONE can do those!)  Today I resolve to pick up one of those workouts at some point and do it.  Eventually.  Maybe after my nap.  I’ve already tried to nap once and the four year old came in the room every two minutes with a different question.  I’ll have to try that again while they are watching their shows.  Then maybe I’ll try to exercise.  I DID get up and do a 57 minute walk this morning.  Then I went back to bed-come on it was EARLY!

ADD people can be very hypersensitive.  Thanks to that and just being an incredible wuss I can’t stand any kind of heat.  Or cold.  So right now during one of the hottest summers since, well a really long time, in order to get it done I have to do it very early.  My husband leave for work at 5:45 so I must exercise before that if I want to do something that involves leaving the house.  He doesn’t really get it-“You know we have a treadmill” he tells me often.  Oh shut up and go to your damn gym where you get to work out without children constantly interrupting you or staring at you…

Did I mention I’m jealous of his gym membership?

I guess it could be worse.  I’m not even considered overweight by most standards, I am a size medium.  I do have love handles and a spare tire that looks like I have a sausage or a life preserver wrapped around me at all times, but at least I can hide it with clothes. Despite the bit of cellulite, varicose veins, and bruises, I think my legs aren’t all that bad.  And despite two children I lack the one problem that many women have, which is hips because I have none.

The real nice thing about being larger than I used to is that my boobs are HUGE.  At least I have SOMETHING I can flaunt nowadays.  The bad thing is that my daughter is obsessed with them “Mommy I love your booooooooooooobs”, she says quite often.  She can’t wait until she has boobs too.  What’s wrong with this picture?

Now I’m getting too hungry to think.  Must find something substantial to eat, then maybe I can find the willpower to do one of those 15 minute workouts.  Or maybe try again to take that nap.