It's No Joke. Exercise and other things are a Bitch!

After months of doing nothing short of opening a bottle of wine, I decided that it was time for me to take my health and my life into my own hands.

My plan: Get up early every day, take my vitamins, exercise and drink plenty of water.

What happened yesterday: I woke up early, took my vitamins, exercised and drank plenty of water.

What happened today: Hit snooze button 5 times, forgot my vitamins, was too sore from exercise yesterday to exercise today, and at 10:00 am I have only consumed about 8 of my 64 daily ounces of water.

I would say that is not too shabby, right?

My main problem areas for which I need solutions:

1. I am not a good sleeper, I never have been. I have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep and not having knife-wielding clown dreams so when I finally fall asleep, I need to stay asleep. When my alarm clock goes off at 6 am, I simply cannot get myself out of the confines of my bed because the fact of the matter is I quite possibly have only been asleep for a few hours. So exercise in the morning (which I am told is best) is very difficult for me.

2. When I come home in the afternoon, I become a crazy person as I am trying to still clean up the mess from the day before. I walk through the dog hair tumbleweeds to the sink full of dirty dishes and become a frantic lunatic to figure out something edible for my family to eat for dinner. I open a bottle of wine and sit and stare at my surroundings. I think to myself, this would be a wonderful time to take a walk.

3. I don’t know how to take care of myself anymore. I am so incredibly busy caring for everyone and everything around me, that I constantly put myself on the back burner. This is I am sure, typical of many other working mothers. Secretly I tell myself that I must take care of myself in order to continue to work myself into the ground caring for everyone else but I simply don’t feel like there is time in the day. Either that or the guilt I feel doing something for myself, is simply too much for an ordinary weekday.

4. I would say, in part I am somewhat lazy or rather, unmotivated. I want to be in shape, have flatter abs, smaller legs and arms and I crave to be a size 4 again and yet I am not willing to give up certain things…like wine, bread, cheese or pasta. So shoot me! I am a real woman with curves and I wish at 41 I could come to terms with my body and stop wishing to have the body of an 18 year old. My mother keeps telling me that 20 years from now I will look back on my body and be amazed at how beautiful I was. That is hard to imagine. Supposedly in 20 years I will be praying for this not so flat belly, these not so muscular ex-dancer legs and these not so skinny arms.  So in my issue stricken desire to be a thinner, healthier version of myself but not give up anything I eat or drink illustrates my laziness aka my unmotivated tendencies. Ugh!

5. Metabolism sucks. Period. Unless you have one of those fast metabolisms where you can eat whatever you want and not gain a pound. In which case, I hate you! Think back now. The days of senior prom week when the dress you were going to wear was just a tad bit too tight and you gave up, I don’t know, GUM for the week and miraculously you lost 5 pounds. I guess this is where I revert to that 18 year old body image. I want it but don’t want to work for it. I suck and so does this slow metabolism that hit me when I was 35.

6. Media and magazines will destroy the true image of beauty. I wish someone would come out with a magazine featuring 35+ women that were sizes 8 and up, who were happy with their bodies and ooze their confidence on all the shmucks, like myself that are in peril over eating and dieting and hating themselves because they are not a svelte size 2 like LeeAnn Rimes or Victoria Beckham. I want someone with a Marilyn Monroe body advising me on how to love myself, how to stay motivated and how to cut back but not eliminate everything I love. Is that too much to ask?

As I re-read this blog, I am more struck by the fact that most likely, my issues have more to do with me being lazy or unmotivated rather than any other of my complaints. Of course, this is also me, being way too hard on myself. I am harder on myself than I ever would be on a friend or even a complete stranger. But I suppose that’s how it goes sometimes; being my own worst critic. Oh well. If self punishment were a true motivator, I would be putting down this piece of cheese in my hand and putting on my running shoes. Unfortunately, it’s not.