| Slugs |
 My husband and I have hit a fitness impasse. We are turning into slugs, and I'm not sure what to do about it. This impasse started out with something as innocuous as job changes: he started driving for longer hours in order to get a bigger paycheck. As soon as I was able to go to work here in Australia, I got a desk job with a one and a half hour commute each way on the train. Needles to say, by the time both of us got home from work, we were exhausted. We had arguments over who was going to cook dinner that night, since hubby would get home a good while before me, but still expect me to start dinner the minute I walked in the door.
In a zombie-like state, I made nice dinners for us (looking back, I'm thankful for a mom and a grandmother who cooks, and for my Home Ec classes - as much as I hated them.) The only problem was, we were eating well at night, and then just sitting down and vegetating afterwards, since we were both so tired. I gained the obligatory ten pounds post marriage weight, and Dan gained more. My situation was made worse when I got put on medication for a health problem. I decided to live with the health problem, and ditched the medication after only two months, when I looked in the mirror one morning and saw a bloated chipmunk looking back at me.
I lost most of that weight, but not the cooking-Sunday-dinner-every-night-married-life weight. Any muscle tone that I might have is a result of the clenching of all available muscles as I endure another day commuting on the train. This can be measured in direct proportion to my blood pressure, which has risen steadily over the past few years.
I thought about joining a gym, but the cost of gym memberships here is astronomical. So then I thought - there's nothing I can do at a gym that I can't do at home. But this is where I always fall down. I get into a good routine for about a week or two, overdo it, my muscles kill me, I have to take a break, and then I am back into my old habits. Why - oh why - wasn't I born an exercise freak? Some people are fortunate enough to get addicted to exercise. Me - I'm addicted to chatting on the Internet - after a day of work that consists of sitting in front of a computer and developing Internet marketing strategies. My gluteous maximus is sucking every available ounce of nutrition that I consume, in order to maintain its predominance in the hierarchy of my bodily structure. J Lo I am not.
Dan has a similar problem. He's developing a large veranda that sits over his toy shop. He's looking less and less like Bob Geldof and more and more like Jackie Gleason. See, I swore to myself that I would look more like Jane Fonda when I'm 60 than Shelly Winters. (Although Shelly had a wonderful personality, she wasn't modeling lingerie when she was 60). And so I am fighting, fighting the effects of gravity and have cut down on my caloric intake to a point that a goldfish would starve - and I am still a few pounds heavier than I would like to be.
I think the writing is on the wall. We will have to get off our butts long enough to burn some calories at the end of the day, or risk turning into slugs. The only upside to turning into slugs, that I can see, is being justified on purchasing a new wardrobe. And maybe I'll want to get out to garden in the rain more often.
Postscript: No sooner did this blog entry get published, then Dan entered the room and said: "let's go to lunch." Sometimes, you just can't win. |
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Name: Melanie O.
Home: Durham, North Carolina, United States
About Me: Female, American health and beauty-conscious professional who has rekindled a childhood love of dolls.
See my profile...
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posted by Melanie O. at 
Nice blog :-)