M. Suzanne Terry

Every October, the Nester hosts a link-up for 31 Days of ____.

I am participating in October Unprocessed this month (starting….now…because I totally just had goodbye-Debbie-we’ll-miss-you donuts this morning), and I was going to write about that for 31 days. But while there are many awesome things about being almost 40, one thing that is less awesome is that a healthy diet alone is no longer enough to keep extra weight from creeping up on me.  And as you can see in the (*cough*adorable*cough*) picture above, I have never been big-boned.  My hand is not much bigger now than it was then. Extra weight is not a friend to my skeletal system.

So I’m going to write the 31 days that I should have written ten years ago. I can’t go back in time, but I can start incorporating more movement into my everyday life, and it begins today.

My behavioral cycle is to get excited, dive in head first, experience failure, get discouraged, quit, and drown my sorrows in another donut. I recognize that. So I am not going to do 31 days of training for that half-marathon that I really want to run in New Orleans in January, because I’m not really sure I could run one mile right now. And I’m not going to sign up for a gym membership, pledging to go for an hour every day at 6:00 a.m. before work, because I think we all know that’s not going to happen.

I am going to set a couple of ground rules:

1. I’m going to choose daily movement that is practical. It has to work with my current schedule. I am willing to give up an hour of Internet/TV in the afternoon to make time for exercise. I am not willing to get up an hour earlier every morning, particularly on mornings when I didn’t even get home until 10:00 or 11:00 the night before.  Most days, 6:45 is already pushing it. And on the days that I do wake up earlier, I would be better off having a good breakfast and getting in some greet-the-day yoga than trying to get to the gym and back before getting to work.
2. I am going to keep my expectations reasonable. Like I said, there will be no sudden intense training. I’m not even going to put a minimum time on it. I might take an hour-long walk one day and fifteen minutes of weight training the next. Both count equally toward my goal, which is simply to add something active to each day.
3. Bonus points if I try something new. A lot of my fitness goals fail because I find one thing to do, and I get bored with it. Exercise is so, so dull to me. I know I like to dance, so Fridays are going to be dance party days (you know you’re excited), but even dance every day will eventually lead me to thoughts like, “This again? Wouldn’t you rather watch Psych reruns, self?  I think so. Compromise – we can dance to the theme song.” And thus the unraveling begins. So I am open to suggestions, but if your suggestion is something like rock climbing, I reserve the right to give you the side eye.

You can watch it all unfold here. Wish me luck!

Day 1 – Taking the Stairs

Day 2 – Push It

Day 3 – Dance Party – Club Songs

Day 4 –  Clean Up

Day 5 – Stretch!

Day 6 – The Butt Book

Day 7 – Pilates

Day 8 – On Not Moving

Day 9 – Serious Arms

Day 10 – Dance Party – Club Trad

Day 11 – Not-Racing

Day 12 – Chasing the Dogs

Day 13 – Boot Legs

Day 14 – Zumba

Day 15 – Tuesday’s Child

Days 16-20 – A Tale of Two Cities

Day 21 – The Wrong Milk

Day 22 – Goodnight, Yoga

Day 23 – Supermarket Shuffle

Day 24 – Dance Party – Girl Child of the 80s

Day 25 – Just a Little Walk in Hell

Day 26 – Bookworm

Day 27 – Why Girls Are Fierce

Day 28 – Ten-Minute Ballet

Days 29-31 – Last Dance