Keeping My Body in Shave

After I birthed The Girl, my workouts were very habitual.  Almost every morning, I was in the living room doing my pilates.  I walked whenever I got the chance.  One day my husband remarked that I looked better than I ever had (dating days included), and once… I bent over and touched my toes.  THIS, if you understand the length of my legs, was something of a triumph for me.

After birthing The Boy, I wasn’t so dedicated.  I was tired, you know.  I was REALLY tired.

Then my body took a baby-making break, and I thought it was as good a chance as any to get in shape.

-Please forgive me for abruptly changing the mood of this post.  Rest assured, we’ll be playful again in a moment.-

I resolved to work harder, and then one year and two weeks ago a bomb of sorts got dropped on me.  I spent the entire month of January blessedly sick and was able to hole up in my house with all manner of legitimate excuses.

“No I can’t help, I’m sorry.  My daughter has a terrible cold, an ear infection, AND pink eye.”

“No, I won’t be at the party.  I’m sorry.  My son has a temperature of 103.”

I sometimes stared at my cell phone while it rang, and even though I really didn’t WANT to pick it up, I couldn’t. My voice was absolutely gone. Thus I was able to hide away from society without having to reveal my real need for doing so.
I often wondered if you could tell something was haywire with me. I tried not to let my off-ness come across in my blog posts, but I’m sure it did. My life is an open book -as much as I sometimes hate that. One morning, early in January, I decided I’d try to fold some laundry. My husband had been taking care of things as best he could, and he had been washing laundry without ever folding any of it. I thought to myself ‘Folding is simple. You can fold.’
So I got out of bed.
I walked down the hall.
I looked at the laundry.
I burst into tears, ran back to bed, and didn’t bother trying anything else that day.

It’s funny now, to think of myself that way. We all go through times like that in our life. I’m sure it won’t be the last time laundry looms and taunts me and makes me cry.
The best part of this story is: I got through it. I mean, sure, there’s still laundry on my couch, but I’m not crying about it. I’ve grown and changed, and even though it took me HALF OF AN ENTIRE YEAR to stop crying about it (yeah), I hit a point in November when I became extraordinarily GRATEFUL for it all. I’m still grateful for it, and now that it has been a year, I’m more and more grateful.
Isn’t that a great story?
Now.
Onto the bad part.

When a girl is more focused on keeping her sanity than her body, things start to… change. Did I care that I was eating crap for breakfast? Huh? No. I hardly noticed what I was eating at all, to be honest. Did I walk? Work out? No and no.
Out of genuine concern, my husband once breached the topic with some trepidation.
“It might help you feel better…”
I won’t tell you what my reply was, but I WILL tell you that he never brought the subject up again.

I used to work out to look good, but in the past year, I reached a point where I didn’t care anymore. Then I reached a point where I realized that I needed to work out -not for vanity’s sake, but for the sake of taking care of what the Lord has given me. I’ve been given a precious body, and I need to take proper care of it, rock hard abs or not.

So I started jogging. I hated every minute of it, but I loved how I felt when I was done.
Then I stopped jogging for two reasons
#1) I hated going alone -“paranoia, paranoia, everybody’s comin’ to get me.”
#2) Cows were put on my track.

My track, it should be said, was a dirt road behind my house that runs the length of my Dad’s farm. Now there’s some cows on it (and a few ADORABLE calves that I’m trying not to love on account of my impending feasting on one of them). And aside from my unfounded fears of being charged and killed by a heifer, running with cows just isn’t seemly.
Excuse me while I adjust my corset.

I found some excellent walking partners, and I went religiously walking… for a week. We tried to go more often, but both of them have babies, and when you spend the night up with a baby, you just don’t feel person enough to wake up at 5:30 and walk your thighs off. Then the holidays came.
Then my husband gave me a work out DVD for Christmas. In his defense, I had mentioned a time or two that I wanted it.
Now.
Remember.
Please, remember.
I haven’t worked out in ages. My Pilates DVDs have been gathering dust for an entire year, and I’ve been less-than-careful with my eating habits. Okay, it’s been a year of free-for-all, and my sugar addiction has been the ruler of the day. I weigh more than I ever have, and after registering on sparkpeople.com, I found that I needed to lose almost 20 pounds to be healthy.
I will also say that losing 20 pounds will put me back at what I weighed when I went to college.
So I’m a little suspicious that sparkpeople.com wants me to live the life of an 17 year old who ate Snickers and Dr. Pepper for lunch.
But I digress.

I cracked open my workout DVD this morning. It is Jillian Michael’s 30 day shred. I did the first work out.
That is to say: I pushed “play” on the first work out. I was grateful it was only 20 minutes long. My husband was in the shower and wouldn’t be able to witness my first attempt at working out in over a year.
I started off okay.
Jumping jacks? Okay, yeah. I can do that.
Arm weights? Okay, ow. Okay, OW!
Back to jumping jacks. Whew.
After 11 minutes, I was breathing heavily and wanting to really puke up everything I’d eaten before working out (which was 4 cookies, so judge me up one side and down the other starting… now).
My push ups went from full-on awesomeness to resting-on-my-knees patheticness in all of, oh, 2 minutes.
By the 15 minutes mark, I bent over, rested my hands on my knees and PANTED. I was nauseated, and I seemed to be seeing everything through some sort of soft lens which is exactly why I didn’t see my HUSBAND walk in at that exact moment.
“Whatcha doin?” He asked. I immediately shot up like a rocket and feigned jumping jacks.
“Oh, you know…” I breathed heavily, “Working out.”
“You okay?”
That’s all it took. I stepped backward onto the couch as Jillian Michaels professed that I should be feeling the burn and getting lower.
“I’m done! I’m through! I’ve had it!”
“Breathe through your nose,” he said, calmly.
Oh, men. What do we keep them for, if not bits for wisdom that make us want to punch them in the nards?

When it came time for cool down, Jillian asked me to sit down and try to spread my legs out in front of me as FAR as I good. She was shooting for me to get that at a 180 degree angle. I got a good 30 degree, with a great deal of effort.
“Reach all the way and touch your toes if you can, if not just grab your calf.” I made it to my knee.
That was an hour and a half ago, and my arms JUST stopped shaking.

My son watched the entire video from the couch, and when it was over he asked me WHY I watched a movie like that.
“I have to keep my body in shape,” I replied weakly, mostly because I didn’t really BELIEVE what I was saying.
“In shave?” He cocked his head, “I don’t hafta keep my body in shave.”

Ah, boys. What do we keep them for if not to make us laugh when we want to cry and puke?