Happy Exercise

I am exhausted but determined to write something tonight.

It was a long day and I started off feeling very discouraged about the state of my house. After some list-making and prayer, I got to work. I am so close to being done with laundry, yay! And I managed to do a bunch of other things that had been bugging me.

I've been wanting to talk a little bit more in detail about exercise. I feel like I touched on it in another post, but I have a few more things to say about it.

I grew up being very active. I swam on a team from the age of 6 through high school. I played soccer and softball as well. I enjoyed running around, riding my bike, playing volleyball, etc.

I was always the girl in gym who tried a little too hard. I ended up sweaty and smelly while the other girls stood around, afraid to break their nails.

Once I hit college, though, something shifted. I loathed running and wanted to swim. Without a formal team around me and a coach in front of me, though, I couldn't get myself to focus and complete a regular workout consistently.

I would walk some and I remember doing a Cindy Crawford workout with my friend Chante in her dorm room, but nothing really clicked.

Twelve or so years ago, when I first started trying to lose weight, I started small. I aimed to walk 30 minutes a day. I walked in all kinds of weather. I walked in all kinds of different places. I didn't have a heart rate monitor or GPS or anything. I just made it a daily habit to walk.

At the time, I was smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes. I knew I needed to quit, so I started taking Zyban. About six months before that, I found a Couch to 5K program online and started following it on the treadmill at the gym. I got a watch and was able to run around the track inside the gym.

My first 5K was at Northwestern in November of 2002. It was a cold day and I didn't run fast, but I did run the whole thing.

My first half marathon was in 2003, the North Shore Half Marathon in Highland Park. Everyone had failed to mention that Highland Park was built on a ravine. I couldn't walk for two days. It was brutal.

From there, I decided to tackle the marathon. I ran the Chicago Marathon for the first time in 2004. Keep in mind, I had no kids and my (then) boyfriend was working a full-time and part-time job. I had a lot of free time and very few responsibilities. I was able to take my time getting the long runs done and then had ample time for recovery.

I took most of 2005 off because we got married that year and Brian made me promise I wouldn't do any big races that year. I was the thinnest I've been in adulthood when I got married. I got down to about 178, as I recall.

Again, keep in mind I had no kids and no real responsibilities. I was eating food laden with preservatives and following the letter but not the spirit of the WW program.

In 2006 I made a fatal error and tried to train for two full marathons. By the time I ran the Chicago Marathon that fall, I was burnt out. I didn't want to run anymore. We still had a gym membership, but I had started working retail. Those hours are not conducive to a healthy schedule. I started to put the weight back on.

While I was pregnant with Jeremy (our oldest), I hardly exercised. I was working on my feet all day and was so exhausted that the thought of working out was too much.

I did not have gestational diabetes with Jeremy, but I put on a lot of weight during that pregnancy. After he was born, I still couldn't manage to get to the gym a lot. We got pregnant with Bekah pretty quickly and I did end up developing gestational diabetes during that pregnancy (and with my subsequent pregnancies).

I have to say, it was tough to reboot my workouts after Bekah was born. There was a part of me that was kind of humiliated that I let myself go. Plus, in my mind, I was a marathon runner. How could I start all over again?

Meanwhile, I was trying to track my calories and/or points, depending on what point in time it was. For a while I had the WW fitness tracker. I got pretty active (and obsessive about how many points I had earned), but I ate all the points I could.

Before getting pregnant with Brooklyn, I rediscovered my love of running. I decided to run a half marathon with Team World Vision. I had a lot of fun doing it, but then I had three kids and my recovery time was usually nil.

Due to complications, I was not able to work out very much (if at all) while pregnant with Brooklyn. I wish I could say I tried to eat well, but I wanted comfort and chose to seek it in the bottom of cookie boxes.

My point to all of this is, I have spent a lot of time exercising as a way of losing weight. I am always interested in how many calories I've burned. I'm trying to burn and expend more calories than I eat. It becomes a very legalistic, measured thing. If I don't exercise, I hate myself. I feel like crap. It darkens the mood of the whole day.

So when Kristin told me exercise should be a stress-reliever, not a stressor, my mind was blown. I decided to find a level of exercise that fit into my day, that didn't exhaust me but did help me feel good. In June I walked an obscene amount of miles as a way of kick-starting things. It was hard to see the mileage drop in July, but now I feel like I've found the level that works for me.

I aim to walk 3 miles a day, 2-3 days a week. On the weekend, as time allows, I take Scout on a leisurely walk. I don't even start my Nike Run Club app. We just go for a walk and I let her stop and smell everything she wants. I don't stress that I'm not walking fast enough or far enough or whatever. I just walk. I look around. I pray. I say hello to people.

I have just added in some strength training. I use the Gorilla app. I started at the beginner level (which hurts my ego but is honest). I paid $9.99 to unlock all the workouts. I have started at the beginning of the fundamental challenge. I try not to think about how far along I was working for a year and a half with the best trainer ever. I am finding it takes me about 10 minutes to get through a workout. 10 minutes is manageable for me. Will my body be shredded in 20 workouts? Probably not, but I know building lean muscle is a good thing. I know I feel better when I am doing some strength training. So even today, when the day had gotten long in the tooth, I sucked it up and got it done.

It is humbling to walk for 3 miles when just two years ago, I ran 13.1. My brain still likes to sneer at my current effort. And that's fine, I try to manage my own expectations.

The thing is, it's so FREEING to not be putting crappy food in my body and then forcing myself to workout for an hour and a half to work off the crappy food. I am putting so much nutrient-dense food in my body that I don't feel obligated to workout. I workout because I actually enjoy it. I workout because I feel better when I work out.

Bottom line, if the exercise doesn't serve me, I toss it aside. I have spent a lot of time wasting energy trying to exercise the "right" way for the "right" amount of time. It's not gotten me anywhere in the long run. I feel like I'm much better off walking (and yes, eventually running) in a way that doesn't feel like punishment.