Before I lost my baby weight, I would read weight loss articles and wonder how these women did it. How they could diet and exercise month after month and then submit their stories to run in a national magazine, their “Before” pictures prominently displayed beside their “After” pictures. After all, the whole point of losing the weight is leaving behind the physical person you used to be. Once I dedicated myself to losing weight, I began to see things differently. Losing weight is hard. No matter what method you use, whether it’s diet, exercise, or surgery, once you go back to eating the way …
On a recent run, the sun was beating down and the humidity was so high I could have been swimming along the sidewalk instead of running on it. I was only planning on going three miles, so I felt there was no need to bring along the hand-held water bottle I usually reserved for longer distance runs. Every step felt heavy, like the gravity had been increased. Each time I raised a leg, it felt like it was crashing back down onto the pavement. I had to slow to a crawl and by the time I reached home, I was shaking and weak. My mouth and lips were dry and the muscles in my legs began to cramp. Then…
When I think of Jazzercise I think of little old ladies in leg warmers doing the Charleston, or some watered-down version of it. Or even Richard Simmons dancing around on his “Sweating to the Oldies” video. I definitely think of jazz hands. Jazzercise was not on my to-do list until I spoke with another swim team mom. While our kids swam, she told me how she had become a Jazzercise instructor. It allowed her to make some extra money and stay home with her kids. She could even bring her boys to work with her since the studio had child care. I admitted I didn’t really understand what Jazzercise …
When you go on vacation, exercise may be the furthest thing from your mind. You’re in the mood to get away from it all—and that includes the gym. But if you’ve just started an exercise routine you don’t want to take a break for a week or more. Our vacations are always meant to be relaxing. It is always planned that way, but it’s not the way it usually works out. We’re so worried we won’t get to see and do absolutely everything that we end up running from sun up to sun down. We literally collapse into our hotel beds. Hitting the gym just is not an option at that point. I find the best time to …
My husband MJ has been an avid weight lifter since high school. He had a rack of free weights in his bedroom growing up. When we first got married, we lived in a small apartment and we had even smaller paychecks, but since we were both active duty Air Force, we were able to use the gym on base for free. So while the mountain bikes were parked next to the sofa, there was no need for dumb bells in the galley kitchen. As we moved into civilian life, the homes and the paychecks got a little larger and we began to acquire more things. MJ’s free weights from high school found a home in the loft of …
I am not a morning runner. I cannot make my legs work when I first get up, and the whole run is a struggle. I want to eat breakfast, but I know if I do, I’ll feel sick when I run. But if I don’t eat, I’ll feel sick when I run. So I run in the evenings, usually at dusk when some of the day’s heat is finally backing down. I have several routes I like to take, depending on the distance I want to run, and most of them take me through neighborhoods and along main roads. One, however, never fails to make me feel uneasy. Turning off a heavily traveled street, the road quickly becomes very rural. The…
I was never a long-distance runner during my teen years. I was never a sprinter either, which left me somewhere in the middle of the track and field pack. Long-legged and gangly, I could practically step over hurdles, so while speed was not my friend, the ability to leap tall objects in a single bound landed me a spot on the shuttle hurdle relay team. What I considered then my first experience with long-distance running was an 800-meter race where I placed last. As I lay gasping for breath by the side of the track, I honestly thought I was going to die. And that was when I was “in my prime…
The past two weeks have been a blur of doctors and antibiotics—for my kids and myself. Kids love to share germs. I found myself diagnosed with strep throat for the first time in my life. The cherry on the cake was having a nice raging sinus infection to go with it. While talking like Kathleen Turner is not necessarily a bad thing, the constant nose blowing and hacking doesn’t make for a very enticing package. My exercise routine had to be put on hold for more than a week while I tried to fight off the infection. There’s only one thing worse than resuming your workouts after an illness, and …
There are plenty of days I would rather park myself on the couch with an Xbox controller and play "Lego Star Wars" all afternoon. But besides getting “True Jedi Status”, there is not a whole lot of productivity going on. Being a woman who just so happens to be a mom, I’m good at multi-tasking. I also want to set a good example for my boys, so when it comes to exercise, it’s fun to gather up the whole family to do an activity together. Fitness and family time—who doesn’t love it? Two little angry people who should be slack-jawed zombies after a long winter indoors—which is why it is not only …
I’ll let you in on a little secret: I don’t love exercising. I get hot and sweaty and I have to actually exert myself. But without it, I would need anxiety medicine and anti-depressants … and bigger pants. I’ve always been thin, but when I had my second child, I used the pregnancy as an excuse to eat anything and everything I wanted. A particularly shameful flashback involves devouring an entire box of Thin Mints on the way home from work one evening. I packed on 60 pounds—my double chin had a chin. High on hormones and completely delusional, the bag I packed for the hospital stay included a …
