on exercise

[moominmolly]

Here's an announcement that will shock exactly nobody reading this: exercise is important to me. I feel better, sharper, happier and more interesting when I'm getting enough, and when I'm not, I feel dull and cranky. So why is it so hard to get enough?

After trying seemingly every kind of tracker out there, I've settled into an amazingly simple and effective mechanism for keeping tabs on my exercise level: a wall calendar. Every year, dilletante buys me a calendar that features pictures of strong women, and every year, I hang it up and use it to track exercise. I used to just use it for tracking my lifting, but last year I hit on the idea of using it to track everything.

So that's it: in my basement bathroom, I have a wall calendar. Every day that I exercise, I write the name of what I did in that day's square. "Running." "Biking." "Climbing." "Long walk." "Yoga." No distances, no times, no metrics of any sort, just a word or two to note the day's accomplishment. This means that every time I'm brushing my teeth, I can see with one glance how many of the month's squares have a word in them, and how many are empty. If there are too many blank spots, I know I need to spend a bit more energy to fit in a workout soon. So dumb, so easy, so effective!

But I've had a TERRIBLE winter. Terrible. I was sick for all of December, and I stopped biking to work, which threw me into a funk that I am just now dragging myself out of. And again I was faced with that familiar problem: god DAMN, if I love exercise this much, why is it SO HARD to get started with it, every day? And then, while I was cleaning out a closet last week, I found this year's calendar from dilletante and realized that my precious exercise wall calendar was still displaying December 2010 -- entirely blank. I'd fallen out of my habit of tracking just as easily as I'd fallen out of the exercise habit itself.

Last Wednesday, I hung it up, and it was like magic. Thursday, I biked. Friday I went to yoga with redheadedmuse. Saturday, climbing with dilletante and starphire and minerva42, and then later in the evening again with bbbsg. Sunday, a bit of running and a long walk with Natalie, and today I biked in despite the rain. And I'm smiling! I'm singing to myself, and my thighs ache, and I feel a little bit more alive every single day.

Welcome, spring.

Comments

[cutieperson]

yay :) i admit that i love seeing all the little squares on my Gcal filled with "climbing".