You are absolved

I make people feel guilty.  I don’t want to or intend to.  It’s just my existence that does it.  People find out what I do and suddenly feel convicted of not exercising enough or eating the wrong food.  However, I am not here for that.  I am not anyone’s judge.  I have enough of my own issues, thanks.  I do not need to be evaluating everyone else’s.

All of us, me included, come to fitness with our own set of expectations for ourselves and many of them are—how to put this gently—totally unrealistic.  Yes, there may be people out there who exercise for hours every day and eat a perfectly calibrated number of calories that exactly fill their nutritional needs, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never met any of them.  I’m also pretty sure that their lives have to be built around doing that, and most of us have other priorities, as we should.

I am not saying that we should not aspire to do better than we do now.  We’ll feel better if we do our cardio most days.  We’ll be able to play longer if we lift weights pretty regularly.  Our bodies will appreciate the broccoli and the water we feed them.

We have lives, with families and jobs and cars and dogs and parties and errands and all the other beautiful, complicated stuff we need to show up for.  We need to show up for our bodies, too, but it is a part of life, not all of it.

Guilt is not the best reason to work out.  Love is.  Do the work of fitness because it enables all the other good stuff.

And if that’s not enough:  I forgive you for the cake last week and that missed workout on Wednesday.  Go play.

Monday Workout: Experiment!

Switching up the workout format is a good way to keep the body guessing, which is how we make progress.  We put familiar exercises in a new context and, amazingly enough, we learn.  This week, I’m experimenting with using the battle ropes in a different way.  It’s a shorter circuit, so we’ll do four rounds.

1 min cardio
squats	20
bench press	20
rope double slams	20
deadlifts	20
pushups	10
rope alternating slams	20
pretty princesses	10

Seven things that create power

It doesn’t take much perception to find that we, as a culture, are stressed out.  The world is full of chaos and difficulty and we get tired fighting the forces of evil around us, whether in the form of potential genocide or just the usual Thursday parking homicidal tendencies.  I do firmly believe that it is up to us to make the world a better place.  Developing solutions to the large political and social problems we face is well beyond the scope of my practice, but I can say that we have to do some self-care in order to be able to address the issues.  Here are seven things we can do to empower ourselves.

1.     Breathe heavy.  Cardio exercise reduces stress, improves mood, and helps us build the stamina we need to take on our personal challenges.

2.     Get strong.  On a metaphorical level, when we strengthen our bodies, we practice strength of character.  Physically, we increase our lean body mass, reduce our chances of bone loss, and improve our chances of living a long life.

3.     Drink water.  Dehydrated people are crabby people.  That lady who cut you off in the parking lot was probably dehydrated, as was that guy who was so rude to you at work.  Also, if we are drinking enough water, we’re probably eating and drinking fewer calories and fighting the sugar industrial complex.

4.     Eat food.  This goes with the previous point about fighting the sugar industrial complex.  We all have times when it seems just too hard to cook and we find ourselves in the drive-through line or eating Spaghettios at the kitchen counter or a pint of ice cream in the bathtub.  The goal is to minimize those times with a little planning and a good amount of leafy greens.  It’s good for our bodies and the planet.

5.     Sleep.  We need to binge watch the inside of our eyelids from time to time instead of yet more cooking shows, cop dramas, or Star Trek reruns.  Sleep is necessary for lots of body processes.

6.     Meditate.  Meditation, prayer, and ritual can create small spaces of sanity in an insane world.  Even a few minutes of breathing before we put the car in gear to drive home can help.

7.     Connect.  Hug somebody.  Pick up the phone.  Write a letter.  Join a group.  We need each other more than ever right now.