Choices

Well, here I go again, vomiting up another blog post.  I'm not sure what has unleashed inside of me these past few days but the need to get my thoughts down in writing is huge.  It's as if until I get all these thoughts to the outside of my head, I can't focus on anything else.

This quote popped into my head today.  It's been written in so many formats that I have no idea where it originally came from but it jumped at me and bit me in the ass this morning:

"It's not the choices we made that are the issue, 

it's what we have done with those choices that counts."

Or something somesuch like that...

In my never-ending quest to figure out why I refuse to get my butt moving and exercise on most occasions, I have been doing a lot of exploration of me, my past, my present, my goals, etc.

Last weekend I just couldn't get motivated to do anything and, outside of doing my 3 mile morning walks with a friend, I didn't do anything else. I know, I know, a 3 mile walk is still exercise but I am referring to strength building in particular.

I have been talking to someone about all this and I went down a path, discussing all the reasons why I am feeling "blocked" about exercise.  I am grieving the lost of a past relationship, of family.  I am grieving that my new family isn't how I idealized it would be.  I have some conflict with my ex.  My husband has conflict with his ex.  All these stresses must be causing me to not exercise.

Okay, today I called bullshit on myself.

The truth is I'm not really grieving.  I've done that.  I know exactly why I am where I am.  I have made certain choices and I accept that I own those choices.  I know where I come from, why I am the way I am, and what I need to do to be a better person.  It's not all hidden deep down inside of me.

Sure, I grieve the loss of my first marriage, mainly from the standpoint of not being one big happy family anymore.  But if I'm honest with myself...there is a lot I could have done to save that marriage that I chose not to do.  Not saying I should have tried to save it but I could have done things different that might have resulted in a different outcome.

Sure, I have things I want to be different in my current relationship.  My hubby's relationship with his kids is less than ideal, I do not have the one big happy family here either.  Also, he hasn't overly bonded with my son, his stepson.  But they get along, we eat dinner together every night, occasionally do things as a family and they exhibit respect for each other most of the time.  My son has his dad close in touch so I think this is all I can really hope for.

But these are facts, not excuses.

I even used to use drinking as an excuse to not exercise.  I told myself if I quit drinking I would have so much energy, I would work out, feel great, blah blah.  When I first quit drinking I threw myself into exercising.  I did this I think to distract myself and to have something to pinpoint and say "aha, see why not drinking is so good for you? You are exercising!!!"

The problem was that once my love affair with wine wore off, my attitude changed and I stopped exercising.  I made it through an amazing sober first by going on a 2 week vacation with my family and never even taking a sip of alcohol.  I got back and exercise went out the window.

I know I need to change my attitude toward exercise, change it's role in my life, much as I have worked to change alcohol's role.  I finally hit my breaking point in regard to alcohol and made the change.  I'm not sure how one hits bottom in regard to not exercising but I'm working on figuring that out.

I need to put the same energy into starting to exercise that I put into quitting drinking.  Duh.

I need to stop thinking there is a "certain" way to exercise or else I fail.  I have a FitBit that I haven't used yet as it is still decorating my dresser.  I'm going to dig it out tonight and see how much exercise I get around the house, on days I walk etc.

Today my son and I took our two dogs out on my 3 mile walk.  There is something about two crazy wild beasts looking at you so lovingly with tails a wagging that didn't let me bag out this morning.

 (That and I was worried that the box of dog cookies they counter surfed from the kitchen yesterday and ate in my family room might turn into worse destruction in the form of shoes or furniture if I didn't get them outside!  Hubby normally runs them but he is gone for 4 nights.  Oh, woe is me..)

I also went out and cleaned the pool from top to bottom.  For anyone that has tried to arrest a yellow algae bloom with a pool brush, you will know this is a pretty darn good arm and ab workout.  So I checked that box.

Note that all my exercise today was for something else.  The dogs.  My sense of perfection in not wanting to look at a urine colored pool.

I am slowly going to work on designing an exercise program based only upon exercise I know I like, exercise I can look forward to.....possibly.

I have come up with a list:
- continuing to walk (I love yakking with my friend on our walks)
- making time for my elliptical machine (I love listening to my audio book)
- biking (figuring out the bike rack on husbands car and riding once a week while son has sports)
- dancing (when I'm by myself, as it is not pretty, just turn on Pandora and rock with tennis shoes on)
- wii (just spend 30 minutes every other day using the wii on whatever exercise game I want to)

There, that's good enough to start.  If I feel like doing squats or bicep curls, I might.  Maybe blogging about it will keep me accountable like it did for not drinking.  I am starting an exercise tab as well to log my progress.   If there is anyone out there reading this who needs to start exercising as well, maybe now is the time and we can keep each other motivated.  Only if you already dread it like I do :-)  I am happy to buddy up via this blog or through email.

There reason I think blogging works is that we need that accountability to get going on something.  Then, once the new habit takes over such as not drinking or starting exercise or whatever, we can gradually back off the blog or the accountability to others because we end up being accountable to ourselves.  That's my theory anyway.

Oh, almost forgot, I need to celebrate something here.  Despite my blogging which obviously makes one think of alcohol, yesterday after 4pm was the first time I can think of where I never thought about wine at all in the evening.  I realized this morning that I made dinner (okay, ordered it and picked it up), watched tv with my son, finished up some things around the house, made tea and hopped into bed with a book......never even thinking about wine!!!  (While I don't want it anymore, I usually still think about what I used to do!)  Yay!!!  Probably had more to do with the fact that hubby wasn't around drinking any but I'll take improvement where I can get it!

HD

 (PS - Someone said they couldn't see my tabs...I know on my phone I can't see them unless I scroll down and click on View Web Version, then they show up along the top.  My lists, Counting and now Exercise Log.)