Working On My Fitness: No Breaks

Pinned from here . . .  and of course, there's a Pinterest board for that!

Happy holidays and all that.

The holidays are weird.  Do we celebrate them so much as we endure them?  Just me?  Okay.

The thing that I have learned this holiday season is that if I slack off anywhere, it should not be on my gym schedule.  I took a break from working out the week of Thanksgiving because of traveling and weird work schedules and that break stretched into about three weeks-almost without my notice.

There were no physical changes to snap me back to my senses.  Instead, I noticed a steady slump into depression.  Not working out regularly is a little too taxing on my mental and emotional health.

Here's the thing. . . I don't LOVE working out.  I am mortally embarrassed by the people at the gym who like to make love to themselves in the mirrors with their eyes while working out.  I am a little put off by the manic sounding fitness updates of some of my more committed facebook/pinterest/internet friends.  I can't imagine myself ever looking forward to just sweating.  If I ever post a selfie from the gym I have probably been coerced in some way.  Like-it might actually be a proof of life thing because I've been kidnapped.  Seriously-call someone.

But, I have come to realize that I NEED  to work out. 

I need to go out and do things that are really hard for me because focusing on doing those things makes it possible to just be quiet in my mind.  I guess working out is a kind of meditation space for me.

I need to work out because I need to stick to a schedule that is just mine.  Every other part of my day feels like it has been taken up by things I need to do for other people.  I work to make money for myself, sure, but my schedule is still dictated.  My fitness schedule is really the only one that I have complete control over.

This wild impulse to commit some holiday martyrdom over Thanksgiving meant I relinquished my schedule in favor of other things. . .  and it did not go well.  I felt more stressed, more rushed, and more unhappy than I have felt in a while.

So I will be heading back to the gym-along with everyone else this month.