Plans...

I’m a planner.  Things don’t always go according to plan, but at least I have one.  Planning makes it easier to stay on track.

Every weekend, I figure out what the week’s workouts for me and my clients are going to be.  I plan the week’s dinner menus and do the grocery shopping (I eat the same thing for breakfast almost every day, so I just have to make sure that the usual ingredients are on hand; lunch tends to be leftovers.).  That means that I don’t have to spend a lot of time every day wondering what the heck I’m supposed to be doing.  I can just get down to doing it.

When something comes up, I can adapt the plan.  Spontaneous dinner out?  No problem.  Bad night of sleep?  Weight lifting can wait one more day.

If, over the course of a few weeks, I notice that something is not getting done regularly, I can figure out why and adjust the plan.  Maybe I need to get to bed earlier, or make more things in the slow cooker, or mix up the workout so I’m excited about it again.

What’s your plan?

Stand up and smell the roses...

In general, having a short attention span is not a great thing.  Sustained focus comes in handy for all kinds of serious, deep work.  However, that short attention span has one really useful feature:  it helps us move.

I am not suggesting that we jump up from whatever we are doing every five minutes.  Every half an hour to an hour, though, a pause to stand up, stretch, go to the bathroom, take a quick lap around the office/house/block can give our brains and bodies a moment to refresh.  When we don’t move often enough, we lose range of motion and flexibility.  Things that hurt feel worse.  Things that didn’t hurt before start to get in on the act.

Try it and see how it works.

This flower would look sweatier if it were working out...

Last week I posted a photo of myself that I took during my weight workout.  News flash:  I am fifty years old, not exactly thin, and unlikely to have a career in modeling.  In the photo, I was also sweaty because that is what happens when I lift heavy weights.  Because I was raised female, it was hard to post that photo.  Because I work in the fitness industrial complex (although I try pretty hard to be subversive), the difficulty was compounded.

Say it with me people:  fitness is not about image.  Then say it again, louder, to the mirror.

Fitness is about doing hard things that make our bodies feel better in the long run.  It can get messy.  We don’t have to comb our hair first.  Unless cute fitness clothes motivate us to put them on and go work, we don’t need those.  The mirror in the gym is there not to reproach us or criticize us but to show us useful information about alignment.  The mirror does not care what size our butts are and really, if someone else at the gym is worrying about the size of our butts, that person should be working harder and paying attention to their own stuff.

It’s tough to ignore all the programming.  Do it anyway.  It makes us stronger.