Sedentary

I live a sedentary lifestyle. I spend nine hours a day with my butt in a chair at work. In the rare instance that I move during the day it is either to get to or from a meeting (where I'll be sitting down) or to serve some biological function. I sit in my car on the way to and from work. When I get home, I sit at the dinner table. I get maybe an hour of playtime with Corbin before it's time for his bath. Then, once the kids are in bed, I either sit on the couch and watch television with Jenn, or I sit at my desk and play Warcraft. After all that sitting, it's time to rest and lay down for a night's sleep.

I'm tired of living that way. I used to be fit. In high school I knew that when classes let out at 3pm, I would be heading to the football field / track to get two to three hours of good exercise. I don't think I appreciated it as much then, but I'd love to get out of work each day at 3pm and have the freedom to go get some exercise and keep my body fit. After we moved into our house, I got into running again. I kept at it pretty well, and even ran in a couple of 5K runs and one 10K. My weight was back down to a reasonable level too. I really fell off the horse though. I stopped running, and started sitting more. Sure, I play volleyball every Tuesday, but one night a week just isn't enough exercise. I've tried keeping my diet under control, but it's just too easy to over eat. There are constantly lunches, celebrations, nights of ordering out, not to mention the 3pm Friday snacks at work. I kept having the intention of getting out and running again, but I just never did it.

Fortunately, I have an awesome wife. Jenn had been talking about joining our local YMCA for quite some time, and I found out that I could get a pretty good discount through work. We got a family membership, and Jenn started going in to swim from time to time. It was great because they have a child care center that can watch Sam and Corbin during the day for a bit while she goes for a swim. She was telling me about it, and it inspired me to start exercising more. I spoke with a couple of people at work, and found that some folks were going in during their lunch break to get some exercise. What a great idea! I allow myself one day a week to eat out with my coworkers, but otherwise I spend my lunches in my office chair. Why not go run?

So for the past two weeks I've been going into the Y to get some exercise. Last week I went on Monday and Friday, with Tuesday volleyball being my third exercise outing for the week. This week we cancelled volleyball due to Halloween, so I went in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The place is fairly empty during lunch, and I've had my pick of the treadmills. I typically get 20 minutes of good running in with a 5 minute cooldown. The past two times I've managed to get 2 miles in, which I thought was a pretty good goal for my second week of running.

This is just the thing I needed. I feel less stressed, less tense, and just...well.... better. I can tell a big difference between my first run and the one I just finished today. A week ago Monday I couldn't catch my breath after my run, and I was still trying to cooldown a full hour after getting back to work. Today I was cooled down by the time I got to my car, and I felt like I was doing the run rather than getting run over. I hope I have the discipline to keep this up. Right now I weigh 230 pounds. Medically speaking I think my ideal weight is 185, but I'd be happy if, over the course of the next 6 to 12 months, I could get myself down to a steady 200 pounds. I'm not going to post daily weigh ins like I did when I first started this blog, but from time to time I'll note my progress. Wish me luck!