Greetings bloggers!
Children, particularly at the age of my sweet darling ones, have a brutal honesty that I used to admire. They just come at the world with whatever they’re thinking, and let it rip. Which again, I used to admire. But the other day, Joshua climbed up on my lap, smacked me in the stomach, and asked “Dada, why your tummy getting so big?”
He’s still in timeout.
After the red disappeared from my face, I realized that the boy is right. Pandemic lock downs are great for keeping the virus at bay, and the calories within reach. Worse yet in my case is that one thing that almost every epidemiologist everywhere suggested as a safe activity was cycling, and I just couldn’t drag myself off the couch enough to get it done lately. There’s been a meme going around on Facebook saying that having lived now through our own pandemic, we understand why paintings from around the plague are of fat naked people lying on couches. I feel seen.
Truly though, all of that is just excuses. I have had and continue to have the tools necessary to start the life changed needed to drop the weight. And it’s not like I didn’t want to do it, I really do! I love riding my bike! I even love (with the new Zwift set up) riding my bike at home and indoors, away from the raindrops. It’s not that I was telling myself that I didn’t want to do it, or that I would never do it. Those would be so final. No, I was using the most deadly line in the world on myself. “I’ll start tomorrow!”
This is insidious thinking, leading to the worst kinds of inaction in all areas of life. There is always another tomorrow, or so we allow ourselves to believe. Tomorrow is a lovely time, with so much less to worry about than today, right? We’ll feel WAY better in the morning. Conditions will be perfect. It’s not that we’ll never ever do it. It’s that we’re going to start tomorrow.
So this morning, fresh off a coffee high, I was once again wrestling with the indecision. I could go downstairs and ride, but I didn’t have the bike set up on the trainer. Plus I had to leave for work soon. Plus I just shaved my head, and I don’t know how long it takes me to get ready in the morning any more (spoiler alert: even less time than it used to). I’ll do it tomorrow, right?
Or better yet, if I’m going to start a whole new training schedule, I should really wait and start it on a Monday. That’s a cleaner way to go about that, right? Yeah. Monday! Let’s wait and do that. Pass the cookies!
But then from across the room Joshy gave me a look. It was probably no look at all, he was probably thinking about Blippi or Paw Patrol or something like that. But what he was really doing was starring me down with a healthy dose of my own conviction. So I dragged myself off the couch, went downstairs, and did a training workout.
I started today. And you know what? You can too!