Hate Exercise

I hate exercise. I mean deep down, in the bottom of my soul hate. Despise. Abhor. I can't even say, with any shred of truth, "I don't love doing it but I love the results." How bad do you hate something when the results don't affect your feelings one way or the other? Jason's parents gave us a Wii for Christmas and I got a Wii personal trainer game (being too cheap to shell out the big bucks for the Wii Fit), used it 3 times a week for the last month, and can see results in my body. For a little it motivated me to continue, but I hate the actual process of the exercise so much that I can find a million reasons why I should put it off.

Physical fitness is an area I've always struggled with in adulthood. As a kid, I was naturally active, skinny as a beanpole and didn't think about eating or exercise at all (oh, how I miss the teen years, when I'd clean our church with my best friend and we'd go to 7-11 repeatedly for slurpees, chips, chocolate bars, Twinkies...anything that caught our fancy, and just eat and eat). In University I gained the Freshman 10 eating on campus and it didn't bother me at all. When I got pregnant with Ava I gained 50 lbs, then had her and lost nearly all of it my first year postpartum. I didn't work at it - I just lost it chasing after her, going to the park, shopping, etc. Then came William. I gained 50 lbs again, and when he was born he didn't breathe immediately and was whisked away to have his airway suctioned. Jason and I waited breathlessly to hear if the baby was a boy or a girl, and it seemed to take forever for him to cry. There was the quiet murmur of our midwife and the nurses trying to get him to breathe, and then that lovely first cry, and then this made it's way around the room, "11.2? Does that scale say 11 lbs 2 oz?" All this before I heard he was a boy. And a very big boy. Nothing wrong, no gestational diabetes, no juvenile diabetes, just tubby and well fed in utero.

Getting rid of the baby weight after William has been an ongoing fight. I know I'm not alone in this battle, after talking to many girlfriends. It's frustrating that the first baby weight came off without really working at it, because I feel entitled to that process again. But age makes a difference, and the baby makes a difference, and the amount of energy we have as moms with one child versus two, or more. It's not easy, but I want to be as healthy as I can be for myself and for my family, and that includes the dreaded exercise. Jason is inspiring in this way because he works out in our basement virtually every morning. There are just so many other things I would rather be doing with my time. I heavily resent the idea of giving an hour (or more when you count the changing of clothes, stretching, showering, etc) to sweat, breathe heavily, and invest in something I don't enjoy but believe to be good for me in the long run.

When the weather gets warmer I'll get outside again. The only exercise I really enjoy is a walk/run combination when I'm alone, because my mind can be as empty or as full as it wants to be. I also work out a lot of screenplay story issues on these solitary journeys. I probably noticed more immediate results from the Wii exercise, but it is so loathsome to me that I must extend myself some grace and just do what I can do (William getting in my way and asking me what I'm doing every 5 seconds might have something to do with how much I hate it). Baby steps are required when doing something hard. I know that exercise must become a higher priority for me, I just have no idea how that will practically look in my weekly schedule. Thankfully, I have time to figure these things out. I'll do the best that I can with the time that I have at this moment. One day William will be in Kindergarten, and I can exercise then, if I don't find something more pressing to do.