Getting Active

Today I took a giant step to a healthier lifestyle. I had a long speed walk with my best friend and her husband this evening. This is HUGE for me, I mean I am the person who buys a two year gym contract and only attends for two weeks. To be honest, I have not seen the inside of a gym or done any real exercise in years, other than walking till I drop in the mall of course. I enjoyed the walk, the conversation and now am sitting here at 23:43 PM and enjoying the adrenaline the walk gave me.

I like exercise, really I do, the problem I find myself having is consistency. I am very well known for my lack of consistency in all the areas in my life. For some reason I cannot stay interested in something long enough to either accomplish it or continue doing it, photography being the exception. I really do want to change this annoying habit , I really, honestly do, but cannot possibly seem to convince my brain that an hours workout per day would do wonders for my mood and my body too. People with ADD are actually encouraged to exercise so I should be actually doing some more activity everyday, it might also help with some of the anxiety I experience from time to time. That should be a good motivator, right, but yet I still find it hard to be entirely convinced.

And then there is the weight issue. It was bad a year ago but I think I am slowly moving into the morbidly obese area according to my BMI. This really does scare the heck out of me. Many of us looove sitting on the couch with some snacks and a movie, especially on the cold night. But do I really want to be one of those people who cannot move off the couch because I have eaten so much that I have literally become part of the couch? Look, honestly, skinny would not look good on me but the weight I am currently carrying is literally starting to weigh me down. I do know that my diet also plays a large roll in losing all this weight and I actually made changes in my grocery shopping to encourage better eating habits for my entire family. Unfortunately exercise is not something I can just buy and make.

It is so easy these days to just go into a shop and buy a Tae-bo of Zumba DVD and do the workout in your own living room, and in fact I own a Tae-bo DVD. But I don't actually know anyone who had purchased any of these products and actually used them for a prolonged period of time. It was an option I considered, but being at home would just give me a whole array of excuses not to actually exercise.

My biggest fear and my best friends biggest peeve about me is my concern for my kids. For weeks now I have been trying to wrap my brain around who will take care of J when I return to work in two weeks, so leaving him in someones arms everyday for an hour, while he probably screams his head off, scares the crap out of me. J has the habit of waking up the minute I have left him with someone. It must be some instinct that he has. This exact thing happened tonight. The other thing I worry about is how much time I will get to spend with my two older kids when I go back to work. They go back to pre-school on Monday and return at 17:00pm when I get home. After which supper needs to be prepared, they need to be bathed fed and read to before bed. My hubby works a lot of nights now and will not be around as much as I will, should I not be spending every moment I possibly can with the kids. But then again, I need to become healthy and improve the way I live for my kids, and the only way I can really do that is to sacrifice that one hour and get my bum into action.

There seems to be more things that should encourage me to want to get out there and exercise than not, but is it not strange that as a mother, our concerns are ten times more focused on what we think our children need. I always feel like my children need me, but I think the year of 2012 should be a year where I consider that making myself better will make me a better and happier mother.

So instead of saying I am going to go for a walk or do some Tae-bo everyday, I am just going to say that I will  not complain about the pain and will not turn down an opportunity to do something active but I will not beat myself up on the days I don't get any exercise either.