I’m very damn near 40 years old. I need exercise. I have a desk job. My ligaments, joints, and muscles are stiff. I realized that ‘doing nothing’ doesn’t mean I will stay the same. It means I will get worse – heavier, in more pain, slower. I started thinking about joining a gym around the holidays LAST YEAR and started searching around locally for a decent place. Yesterday I finally pulled the trigger. My lists of NO’s for a gym wasn’t long: no grunting smelly guys with fingerless gloves & no beach babes with fake tans and fake boobs. All I really wanted was a treadmill, elliptical, and some yoga or stretching classes. I joined an Anytime Fitness, and I got all that, plus unlimited tanning.
Yesterday I went to yoga. I felt like a million bucks! Then I came home to my 3.5 year old freaking out. Then I felt like $1.99. It will get better. Today I got 30 minutes on the treadmill (I’m a walker not a runner). As long as I can get myself to work by 9:30am I will fit in what I can every morning. Right now I have to build up my endurance, but what I’m already finding hard is shutting my brain up. Thirty minutes on the treadmill with ‘nothing to do’ is KILLING me. At least in yoga I had to pay attention to my position and balance and the teacher. Walking a treadmill is like a 30 minute void my brain *screams* to fill. I figured I would use the time to catch up on my audio books (I can’t listen to them and work at the same time, it’s too distracting). I found myself drifting attention in and out of the audio book to look around at the treadmill televisions around me or starting to think about six hundred million other things.
Routine is important. Carving time out of my day is important. Knowing it won’t change or improve overnight is important. Figuring out how to shut my brain up and relax will be near impossible.
