Incidentally speaking

For the first couple months of this body project, I rode the elevator. Up three floors every day at work. Though I’d take the stairs going down.

I’d make time in my day to work out, almost every day, at home or at the gym. But I’d ride the elevator instead of taking advantage of the opportunity for a little incidental exercise.

About a month ago, I started making myself take the stairs. Every day, several times a day, up or down, I take the stairs. It adds exactly no time to my day, and though I’d love to report that I notice a huge difference, I don’t.

Well, not in my body, anyhow. But it’s not all about the body, as it turns out. You’d be forgiven for thinking it is, of course. But no, there’s a mind there, too, however reluctantly it behaves sometimes, it’s still a vital piece of the puzzle.

I really noticed this in Winnipeg two weeks ago. I thought back to last year and how diligently I went to the gym each morning for Aquafit classes, and yet how one of the main motivators was that I could take the bus and end up a block away from work, instead of actually having to walk to work.

Worse than that, I remember the days my roommate would drive us to the office and I would have more than a moment of laziness, where I would consider asking her to drop me off at the side door before she went to park the car in the lot…less than a block away.

I think about that person now, that person who would much rather have mortified herself with that kind of laziness (though, to be fair to myself, I never actually did ask her to drop me off. I do have some dignity, it turns out), than put one foot in front of the other and maybe do herself some good.

I’m not that person anymore, somehow. I don’t know how. But I know for certain that I am prone to that person’s bad habits. Take my eating lately…please. It has been out of whack for three weeks now. The first week was kind of ok, because I worked out every day and at the end of the week, saw my lowest number in recent memory on the scale. The next week was pretty bad. Restaurant eating at least once a day, and zero workouts. It was “okay” because we were on vacation. But, of course, I sprained my ankle and had a cold that just kept on giving and that put paid to me hitting the gym hard when we got back from Winnipeg. I should have stopped eating like I was on vacation the minute I no longer was (and also, can I say, who in their right mind goes to Winnipeg in March on vacation? And works while there? Obviously I have some trouble treating myself right, but that’s another entry all together…). But I didn’t stop. I kept it up all week. And you know what? I can feel the difference.

The same way I could in the beginning when it was all simple revelations over here at Mighty Mighty all the time. Eat less, move more, you will lose weight, I crowed. Hey, dude: the same applies in reverse. Eat more, move not at all, and guess what? You’ll gain.

I haven’t officially weighed myself this week, because I just don’t need to to know that I’m headed in the wrong direction at the moment. I can feel myself softer, flabbier, just bigger. Probably not by a lot, but by enough.

That’s all it is. It’s enough. Time to get past it.