Susan's Homeschool Blog

When I was trying to lose ten pounds, I knew that as soon as the summer was over, our crazy schedule in the fall would prevent me from having time to exercise. This was back when my husband and I were leaders at Cub Scouts, involved in sports for each of our three sons, Bible study, guitar lessons, etc. My husband had deacon training meetings on top of it. Every weekday we had two activities back to back in the evenings, sometimes simultaneously where my husband and I had to take kids to separate places. It seemed impossible for me to fit in exercise.

I somehow had it in my mind that I couldn’t exercise unless I was at the gym. But this was not true. If you’re determined enough, you can fit it in whenever. You just have to plan to do it. For example, when I took one son to soccer practice (at the same time that my husband took another son to karate), I let my other two children play on the playground while I put on my running shoes and ran around the playground and soccer field during the entire hour. To not get bored and feel like I was wasting time, I listened to homeschool audios on my MP3.

When I was raking pine needles in the fall, I did it a lot faster so that it would be aerobic exercise. I did the same with vacuuming. Actually, these chores gave me a sense of satisfaction greater than staring at the sweaty body of the person in front of me at the gym. When winter came, I shoveled the driveway. You’d better believe I was toning my muscles. I was so sore the first day after shoveling, indicating that I had used muscles I hadn’t used for a while. (I had to be really careful not to throw out my back. My husband has never allowed me to shovel the driveway until this year.)

I’m sure you’ll all be disappointed to find out I gained back the ten pounds over the winter last year. I dropped the ball. I had reached my goal. I was my ideal weight. So now I could just live normally, right? Not! By the next summer (last summer), I had the ten pounds to lose again. But this time I didn’t feel like doing it. It just didn’t seem like it was worth all that tremendous amount of work.

Don’t get me wrong. I did lots of outdoor activities with my children, including practicing sports skills. But because I wasn’t working out for real (at a gym or otherwise), I lost no weight at all. Then I turned 40. I gained seven more pounds. Yikes! I found this out on the day after Thanksgiving. Here I was about to enter the Christmas season, and I was overweight by 17 pounds. My husband had canceled our gym membership to save money. Plus, my husband and I were going through a lot of stress from being spiritually attacked for four months, and I cried a lot. But I didn’t pig out. Really. I almost never ate junk food. I wasn’t being bad. I just didn’t exercise.

I set myself the goal of not gaining more weight in December. My husband laughed at my goal. I’ve never had such a small goal. I looked at my husband, and I told him I would lose the weight starting in January.

I kept my word. I gained no weight in December. I bought an exercise video and did it a few times. I told my mom to not put food on my plate at Christmas, that I wanted to think carefully before putting food on my plate. She looked confused because she thinks I’m still skinny. I passed up the gorgeous cookies.

Now that it’s January, it’s time to shed the pounds. I’ve told my husband I’m running the 12K run this year in May, and that I’m going to try a Zumba class. Just you wait and see. You’d better believe I’ll drop the pounds.

Tags: exercise, losing weight

This entry was posted on Monday, January 17th, 2011 at 8:10 am and is filed under Exercise and Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.