22 February 09 - 21:05
Body Language
I made a slight tactical error last Saturday. I work out at home with video workouts and hand weights, and I pulled out a 40 minute circuit training DVD that I had done once before. It's called "Pick Your Level," and has three levels of difficulty. I had been sick the week before, and it had been a good two weeks, maybe three, since I had done any workout other than a gentle yoga session. This sounds manageable, I thought.
Hoo, boy! Okay, first off, it's not in my nature to just do the lowest effort level and move on. I did Level 1 cardio, but weight training is my thing, so I did Level 2 strength training. With my usual amount of weight. After not having done any for three weeks. On Sunday morning, I was limping. It was worse on Monday, but since it was my day off, nobody at the church had to listen to me. Lucky them! My family wasn't similarly spared.
The funny thing is when I complain about DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) after working out, I have a secret suspicion that I'm really bragging. Hey, look at me! I did a workout! You may now praise me for being virtuous. There's an uncomfortable resemblance to the Pharisees with the long fringes on their fashionable prayer shawls, praying in a public place so that everyone can see their conspicuous piety.
The truth is that in this world of eternal youth and hardbodied hotness, the only sins left are to overeat or to underexercise. Gaining weight is a moral failing. Never mind that the way we grow and package food means that nutrient levels are only a fraction of what our grandparents ate (a recent Ontario study showed that a typical tomato has only 17% of the nutrients of a comparable tomato tested in the 1940's, and therefore we would have to eat six tomatoes to get the same nutritional benefit). Never mind the proliferation of fast food restaurants with their cheap, fat and carb loaded treats, or the marketing-driven increase in portion sizes the past decade or two. No, our problem is willpower. And that message just makes me grit my teeth.
Paul of Tarsus had it right all those years ago, that the things that he knew he should do he didn't do, and the things he knew he shouldn't do he found himself doing. I have begun any number of self improvement programs over the years, and watched them fall by the wayside. The truth of the matter is that knowing I should do something isn't a very good motivator for me. All the shoulds pile up until I start to feel powerless in the face of all the external demands. Then I rebel, and the good thing I was trying to get done gets lost in the assertion of my own authority over myself.
That gets me back to my workouts. When my ten year old daughter was a baby, I knew that I was putting on a little weight, and I also realized that living out in the country, more than half an hour from any gym and with nowhere except narrow county roads to walk, with a toddler and a baby in tow, I was getting less and less fit. Getting up off the floor when playing with my kids pretty much required a nearby piece of furniture to haul myself up. The wakeup call came for me one evening when for some forgotten reason I leaned down to touch my toes, something I'd always been able to do with my hands flat on the floor. My fingertips strained to get to midcalf, and stopped. I couldn't make them go any further. I was 36 years old, and I felt like I wasn't living in my own body.
So I went and got a Kathy Smith Yoga Basics video, and started in. I remember how much agony it was to hold a lunge for 45 seconds (I counted), how loudly my hamstrings screamed at me when I lay on my back and tried to get my leg straight up in the air. But I felt better when I did it, and in a fit of enthusiasm, I bought another Kathy Smith video, this one a dance aerobics workout. I did that one the first time with one of my kids' friends sitting beside me in a chair and occasionally saying, "I don't think you're on the right foot." After 12 minutes of uncoordinated humiliation, I turned off the VCR and shooed the kids out of the room. The next time I made sure I was alone, and that worked out a lot better.
I was passionate about workouts for probably four years. I exercised five to six times a week, amassed a video workout library with about 100 titles at this point, and lost fifteen or twenty pounds and two dress sizes. My resting heart rate sat around 60 beats per minute, and I was strong and flexible again. I exercised my way through my third pregnancy, and after my son was born, I kept it up for a year or so. But with three kids and a church situation that had suddenly turned thorny, I found that my heart was no longer in it. Five to six workouts a week became two to three at best, hour long workouts gave way to 10 minute snippets thrown in before bed, just to be able to say that I had done something. I stopped recording my workouts in my date book, because it was too depressing.
Lately, I've been grieving that time of passion for my workouts. When we bought our house, we moved up the hill from where we'd lived before, and picking up the kids from school no longer involves a heart pumping 10 minute walk up a steep incline. I'm back up near my highest weight, and feeling sluggish. And I've got to tell you, the hardest thing about restarting an exercise program is how much it hurts to do the first one. So last Saturday's tactical error was a blessing in disguise. I've gotten in a really good worst one totally by accident, and since then I've done two harder workouts than I've done for two years, an hour long mixed aerobics and weights workout, and a 40 minute step workout with bonus abs, and a relaxing 40 minutes of yoga besides. My plan is to do a short upper body workout before I go to bed tonight, which would put me at four substantial workouts on the week, and I can't remember the last time I did that. Probably six or eight months ago now.
As grieving the passion has given away to realism, I've realized that I can still pretty much count on two hands the number of weeks since I started this workout habit that I haven't worked out at least once. That's coming up on ten years, nearly 500 weeks worth, and nobody can keep that up on willpower alone. Working out has become part of my life. I don't feel right if I don't do it. And while I may not be in as good shape as I was when I was in the full throes of the infatuation, I've settled down into a steady relationship with exercise that makes my body work for me. Yeah, the relationship needs a little work from time to time. But I'm not working on it because I think I should. I'm working on it because it makes me feel good. And because I plan to be using this body for a while yet. I don't care how much it weighs. I just want to be able to get down on the floor to play with my grandchildren. And back up again.
Blessings, Heather.
one comment
I have to admit to a certain amount of chuckling as I read this. Last Sept I started in on a dedicated routine of going to the gym with a personal trainer twice a week, now three times a week, with running on my own treadmill 2 or 3 times more. And I remember well those first few weeks of aching the couple of days after the workout. You see, I have joined the military. I am being posted to Halifax in June. So I thought I would hunt you up and say hi, and was blessed to find your blog and a good chuckle :)
Hope to hear from you soon.
Mary Anne VanHeuvelen () - 27 03 09 - 15:11
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