Thursday, January 19, 2012

Things that I don't like doing: Part 1 of 238439483048

My general rule of thumb is that I dislike running.  I typically do not find it fun or enjoyable and I feel that it serves one purpose: to burn calories, i.e. burn off all the crap I regularly eat.  More often than not, my disdain for running outweighs my interest in burning calories and, alas, I do not run regularly and have not run regularly since college.  There are plenty of types of exercise out there that I don’t loathe.

I have been working out pretty regularly and consistently for 3 years now doing mostly non-running things like kickboxing, zumba, crazy animal-sex, and so on.  I have probably averaged about 3 workouts a week over the past few years which is certainly not blowing shit away on the exercise front, but it’s been sustainable.  Every other month or 3, I go for a run, which I’ve probably previously mentioned is mostly out of laziness because I either a) don’t want to drive to the gym, and/or b) I want to get out of the gym as quickly as possible and I can justify that more easily if I run rather than do something more leisurely.

I always played sports growing up, including basketball and lacrosse in high school, in which running was unfortunately part of the deal.  I despised running more than a mile at a time and sure as shit never did it for fun.  When I graduated high school and started drinking 12 nights a week and gaining weight from it, it dawned on me that now that I wasn’t playing sports anymore I should probably resume some sort of activity, so I started running for shits and giggles.  I started out around 2 miles and worked up to 4-5 and, for a period of time, I didn’t entirely despise it.  Eventually I did come to despise it again and worked my way back down to complete laziness towards the end of college and throughout law school (when I also gained 897,000 pounds) before finally getting back into some milder exercise in 2009. 

Because running burned me out so much and eventually festered into total lack of anything in the exercise family, I’ve always been a bit hesitant to run with any regularity anymore.  I used to do 6 or 7 days a week because I felt like I had to run all the time to keep in good running shape.  Recently, however, I’ve come to enjoy (AKA still dislike but not totally despise) it again in small doses.  It dawned on me that maybe as a once or twice a week thing in conjunction with other more interesting types of exercise, it might not be so bad.  I was also delighted to realize that even not having run regularly in years, doing other forms of exercise has gotten me into good enough shape to at least spit out 20-25 minutes of running at a time, which means that I can run on occasion and not feel like I’m required to do it regularly to stick with it.

Anyway, I’m going nowhere with this post.  There’s a better than even chance that in a few weeks I’ll be totally bored with running again and moving on to Shake Weights.  But since my weight is still plateau’d and I’ve got nothing else interesting to ramble about, figured my new discovery that I can run irregularly and lazily is as good a topic as any.  I signed up for a 5k on February 11 because it’s holiday-themed and some other Philly WW boardies are running it as well and, worst case scenario, I’m cranky and miserable and it’s a half hour of my life wasted.  I’m currently only running a little over two miles a pop right now but in theory if I continue at my once to twice weekly runs plus whatever other rando exercise I crank out for the next few weeks, I will hopefully be able to run it all.  Or I drop out at mile 1 and go eat a cupcake.  Whatevs!

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Twenty Twelve

It’s January 10 and I’m finally getting used to the fact that the holidays are over, for better or worse.  It has been nice to actually have free time for a change and to get back into a stable routine, both in terms of exercise, eating, and life in general.  I’m going to Indianapolis for Super Bowl week (not going to the game itself) at the end of the month so it’s nice to have something fun to look forward to after a few boring weeks of stability.
 
In looking at my weight tracker, I was up a total of 5.8 pounds on the WI following Christmas from my pre-Thanksgiving WI.  It was over the course of several weeks in which I went up and down, with more up than down, and that’s the most I’ve been over my “low” weight this time around on WW.  That said, I was still somewhat happy that it wasn’t worse after several weeks of shabby-ass tracking and overindulgence.  I’ve lost back 2.6 of that over the past 2 weeks and can hopefully dispose of the rest of it over the course of January.  I remember saying before Thanksgiving that I’d be happy to finish the year out at the same weight or a hair lighter than I was then, and feeling like that goal was rather unambitious.  In reality, that goal in itself was a lot to handle!

Anyway, despite my crankiness leading in to January, things have been good so far.   There is something enjoyable about going grocery shopping, cooking regularly, and having a routine again that doesn’t involve candy and vodka for dinner.  I don’t know when I’ll resume steady weight loss again, but if I can just get back to pre-Thanksgiving weight and lose a few more pounds here and there after that, I would certainly not complain.  January is when things got moving on the scale last year so hopefully that can hold true, even to a lesser extent, in 2012!