Started a new full-time job today. Upside: more income, better benefits, slightly later start time, paid holidays and no more getting up at the butt crack of dawn to be at the office on Saturday mornings (Can I get a "Yay!" from y'all?). But it's now a 40-hour, 8:00 am - 5:00 pm schedule, five days a week.
On top of this, I have a family with two small sons (ages 4 and 2, which accounts for some of the weight gain) and my husband (who I sometimes refer to snarkily as my "eldest son" when he gets on my nerves). With family comes housework -- as in, seemingly endless laundry, cleaning, vacuuming, picking up toys, feeding, washing dishes -- and we have a cat (scooping litter, filling food and water dishes). There are only 24 hours in a day and I like the thing commonly known as "sleep", so filling it all in is tough. The other difficulty is my husband's current work schedule (changing in about a week...thank you God!). He works until 6 pm way across town. Like me, he takes the bus but that's because he doesn't drive (and, trust me, it's a blessing for humanity that he doesn't get behind the wheel). So by the time he gets on a bus and gets home, it's after 7 pm so our evenings are shot.
Summer is less frantic because I don't have class. I finished my Masters and am working toward teaching certification, but am at a crossroads. Mostly, after a difficult semester -- both course-wise and personally -- I am extremely burned out and frustrated with academia. I don't know if I'm going to return in the fall, yet. We'll see.
But my plate is full. I blog, yes, and check out Facebook and Twitter (under my personal account -- I'm a Twitter addict. I think.) and other blogs I read. I like to comment and discuss politics or social issues, but that takes up a fraction of a percentage of my day. I have an 85 WPM typing speed, faster when I'm typing from my head rather than a document, so it takes me about 5 minutes to put up a post (provided I don't get waylaid by the needs of small kids). And -- despite my body size -- I'm not sitting on my duff eating bon-bons. In fact, I don't think I've eaten a bon-bon in my entire life.
So there.
I am going somewhere with this, however: Exercise and how I plan to incorporate it into my daily routine.
First, and here's a big plus, my new employer doesn't offer parking (it's in a metropolitan area). There's plenty of lots around the building, but those cost mucho denero, so I'm going to be taking the bus. Yeah, I pick it up at a commuter lot, so there's not a long walk, but I will walk about a quarter-mile each way from the bus stop to the office building. So that's a half a mile a day, times 5 days a week, which equals 2.5 miles of walking a week.
Not worthy of a marathon, but it's a start.
What I'm looking to do is not become a gym rat, or a body builder, but someone who goes above and beyond the daily activity - sweeping the floor, vacuuming the carpet, making the beds -- for at least 30 minutes about 4 times a week. This includes simply going for a walk around my neighborhood -- there are great little trails that wind between the yards here, which I've walked once or twice. Anything more than 4 times a week is gravy; anything less than 3 days a week is not an option.
I have a gym membership, so I don't see the sense in paying them not to use their facilities. It's a no-frills gym with a reasonable membership rate, clean facilities, relatively friendly (but not saccharine-sweet overly friendly) staff, and decent clientele -- as in, there are people there who look like me, not just models who make me want to run into traffic because they've got super-hot bods and are whining about not fitting into a size 0 but have to settle for a 1. Gag me.
When I go to the gym, I try to do some cardio for at least 30 minutes. I find it goes fast if I have my MP3 player and some magazines to read. I like the elliptical machine better than the treadmill because I can burn more calories in 30 minutes on the elliptical. Then I do weight lifting for either the upper or lower body, 3 sets of 10 reps with varying weights depending on my level of soreness and ability. I pick weight that's just enough for me to feel some strain (but not pain) when I get to 8 or 9 reps.
Right now, with the heat, I'm not feeling the greatest, so I'll be taking it easy today. Cooler weather is forecast for the next couple of days, though, so this week I'm going to the gym Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
When Saturday comes, I'm also going to post my stats -- weight, body measurements -- so I can track my progress on a regular basis. I've decided to keep this going for a year, and to give myself a deadline of June 1, 2012 to get myself down to, at maximum, a size 22.
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