The Exercise Conundrum

Here I sit, embodying the conundrum that many mommies struggle with these days: why is it that I do my workout and reward myself by sitting down on Pinterest and pinning dozens of fat-laden, carb-infested meals? They look so amazing that they make me hungry. I want to eat some s'more pie right now. Or one of those 25 Best-Ever-Chocolate-Chip-Cookie recipes that I have now accumulated. All different, by the way. Or even that taco pasta I just found. Something. Anything that is loaded with white flour, and from there it must contain cheese if it's savory, or chocolate if it's sweet. Oh, and butter all around.

And then I bend over to scratch my ankle and my stomach gets in the way. So I sigh deeply and go and eat a cheesestick.

That or I guzzle water and try pinning a few things on my weight-loss inspiration board.

I actually don't have one of those. I just hide them in the one where I put all of the quotes I like. I like to pretend that I'm not actually trying to lose weight that way, even though one of my boards is called something like “Weight Watchers Friendly.”

I'm not sure how a foodie is supposed to lose weight. I'm really not reconciled to the prospect of going through my entire life eating Lean Cuisine while cooking gourmet meals for the rest of my family. I mean, remember what happened in “Last Holiday?” (*See note at bottom*)  But Queen Latifah showed us what can happen if you eat Lean Cuisines. You might live a boring life until you find out you're dying. At which time you will finally bust out of your shell and travel to Croatia and eat every item on the menu and go dam-diving and ski and otherwise live it up. I love that movie. So inspiring. I really do love it.  

In fact, it inspired me so much that I promptly went out and bought a bunch of Lean Cuisines as soon as I finished watching it.

Wait. Did I miss the point of the whole movie? I guess I'll just have to watch it again.

Oh, and just in the interest of keeping it real: that workout I mentioned? It was Jillian Michael's 30-Day-Shred. I'm on day 2. It only takes 20 minutes. It's tough, but it is much more do-able to me than the last workout I tried. Which was an excellent workout, by the way: ChaLean Extreme from Beachbody. It's amazing and I learned a lot from doing it, and I will probably try it again someday. Chalene is an incredible trainer. I've seen people get jaw-dropping results from the program. My problems with it were two-fold. 1. I got stronger, but didn't lose any fat whatsoever until I got the flu and had to STOP doing the workout, and 2. Because it took 45 minutes to complete each day. Maybe 35 on the shorter days. That's enough time to clean the whole kitchen or vacuum the whole house or fold a couple of loads of laundry. Or just spend some incredible quality time cuddling and reading to and playing with my precious little girls. Some people can fit all of the above in, including the 45-minute workout. For me, things were sliding that were really too important to be sliding.

So I'm re-evaluating the way I approach exercise. I'm questioning the way our whole society approaches it. I like to question things. I like to ask “why?” And I have a lot of questions. I'm trying some different methods for exercise and for achieving my weight-loss goals. I can't report success yet, because I have only just started. But I'm hoping that if I write about it, I will stay inspired to keep it up. And maybe some of you will gain some benefit from reading about my attempts to make exercise – not just a 45-minute slot of my day – but to fit it in all day, every day.

Trust me, it's better than it sounds. Stay tuned.

*"Last Holiday" is an excellent movie if you watch it with a filter (e.g. Clearplay) - it has some language and apparently a couple of unnecessary scenes.  I'm not sure what kinds of unnecessary scenes, because I watched it with the filter and I only know that it skipped a couple of scenes.