Instead, I'm looking forward to the new semester looming on the horizon, like a shiny and just-minted penny. I don't think there is anything more satisfying in this life than wiping the slate and starting over. For school, it means I get clean notebooks, new subject matter, and fresh professors. I get to customize my learning and studying habits to these new classes and teachers, gauge how much effort it will take, and then re-start my journey to earning a good grade. Even though each individual semester builds on those that have come previous, working together towards the main goal of a degree, your learning process actually begins anew eight times in a typical four-year college trajectory.
As a child, I abhorred change. My father worked for the park service and we seemed to be moving constantly from park to park. I envied my classmates who had lived in the same town and had the same friends all their life. I wanted the stability and happiness that I believed a constant childhood home gave them. But since venturing out on my own, my father's restless spirit has taken up residence in me. I hate to feel "stuck." I want to leave town on my days off, I daydream about month-long vacations to Mexico and Europe, and I have a list of places I'd love to move to for graduate school.
Why then, with all the excitement I find in starting fresh and all the love I have for new adventures, do I continue to get stuck in a rut when it comes to diet and exercise?
Sometimes, I think all my life problems can be traced back to my swimming career. Even when I was a swimmer who swam upwards of fifteen to twenty miles per week, could go for fifty yards underwater without taking a breath, and qualified for the state championships every single season, my cardio capacity was poor. I couldn't run to save my life. And swimming was my life - it was literally all I did. At some point, two truths got imprinted in my head.
1. I wasn't good at anything but swimming. So why should I try getting my exercise any other way? And once my swimming career was over, why try to find anything to replace it?
2. Swimming is boring (because really, swimming is the most introverted, boring exercise there is. All you hear is your bubbles). Swimming was exercise. Therefore, exercise was boring.
Fast forward to now, eight years after I stopped swimming on a team. My body still reacts best to being in the water, almost as if my muscles are coded to a blueprint from my swimming days. But I hate dislike it. Ultimately, swimming was the one thing I was truly good at, and yet I wasn't good enough.
In the end, this is why I have never been a very active person...because I can't really do anything else.Well, except for the elliptical, and in that case I'd rather just be fat if that's my only form of cardio.
This week, then, will be devoted to mixing things up and surprising myself (should I actually recover from the nasty head/chest cold combo that has been dealt to me). I'll be integrating a few things into my fitness plan that I've previously never done!
- A "song workout" for abs
- Medicine ball ideas
- A three-week plan to completing a pull up!
- Unfortunately, I just finished Season Two on Netflix, or I'd be all for this The Walking Dead workout!
Also, this week I'll be shifting my focus towards homemade food instead of strictly healthy food. Eventually, more homemade meals will lead up to eating healthier overall, and without school for three weeks I have the time to cook! On the menu for tonight: this delicious beef with horseradish mashed potatoes. Yum!
xoxo
amanda
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