My Exercise Dilemma
amy April 6th, 2007
I haven’t been exercising recently for a lot of reasons: our schedule has been really hectic recently, with being sick, traveling, etc.; it’s too hard to find time between work, picking James up from daycare, cooking and eating dinner, putting James to bed, and trying to keep the house in some sort of reasonable order; I’m too tired to get up early or work out at night; yadda yadda yadda.
Probably the biggest excuse, however, is not knowing what to do. In the past I’ve forced myself to go to the gym a few times a week and work out on the elliptical, exercise bike, track, or lift weights, but that is boring. I want to incorporate activity into my lifestyle and make it something that is fun, not a chore, so that I will keep it up.
I have a number of different ideas for how to do that, but my dilemma is that I also want to do something that will get Jason involved. He wouldn’t be caught dead in a NIA or Jazzercize class. We’ve thought about buying bikes and a baby trailer for James, but that would require a large investment. I’m interested in team sport like volleyball or softball, but since neither of us in good shape right now and we would basically be starting out as complete beginners, I’m not sure how we’d go about joining an adult sports team without feeling like total idiots. I like the idea of tennis because it wouldn’t be too much of an investment, (since you can get decent tennis rackets for $30 or less and there are lots of free courts in the parks around town) and Jason and I could start out by playing with each other.
The other big issue is what to do with James while we exercise. It seems like we are locked in to either going to a gym where they have daycare or somehow rearranging our work day so that we can finish our workout in time to pick James up by 6:30. Maybe we could leave work early a couple of days a week and go and hit tennis balls at the park before we get him? We’ve talked about walking together during the week at lunch (we work together so this is easy), but we keep coming up with excuses and haven’t actually gone yet. If we could walk two days and hit balls two days each week I think that would be a good start.
For those who are reading this, have you found a way to make exercise fun? What do you do to stay active while keeping things interesting?
