Driven to distraction

I have yet to understand those people who say that they love to exercise. There are a number of people on the boards I participate in who claim that they can't go a day without going to the gym, climbing some mountain or running a freakin' marathon. I realize that I am still very early in my weight loss journey, but even when I was slimmer and in shape, typical exercise wasn't something I'd bounce out of bed in the morning for and say, "Oh my God, I gotta go do a lap around my town today!"

I know I need to get up and move more. However, none of my exercising experiences (at least in the 'traditional' way most people refer to it) have convinced me that I'll be changing my food addiction for a working-out one anytime soon. There is no one particular exercise catastrophe that has led to this aversion, and I'm sure that it is a great thing. And, it obviously works for the majority of people.

I have discovered, though, that as I get older, a certain kind of ADD has taken over. I find most traditional exercise BORING AS HELL. Break a sweat? That's fine. Push that heart rate to the point where I feel like I have an African drumming ensemble pounding away in my chest, yeah, I'm good with that. I just can't get into the repetition that comes with jumping on a treadmill, recumbant bike or any other piece of equipment (and, don't even get me started on that damn elliptical machine, because I am convinced that it got its start in a dark room somewhere as a new age torture device. I'd like to meet the person who brought this gadget to the workout world and give them a smack upside the head. Experts claim that it is a low impact workout that burns calories more efficiently. That's great, but if I'm dead after a little over 5 minutes on it, it really won't matter that I burned 500 calories. I'll choose another form of "low impact" activity, thanks.)

See, there's that exercise ADD again...

Back to my point, which is activity needs to be something more than going to a gym or running. I like, no need, to change things up. That is why any gym membership I've had usually goes to waste by month two or three. The newness simply wears off and the only motivation left is for me to make a drive-thru run on my way home from the gym to liven my up my day. I think that is what is called counterproductive.

Right now, I do walk, because it is something that this big ol body can handle. But even that gets boring after a while. I've even tried creating various playlists on my Ipod to help liven things up, but eventually, it's all just walking around to the beat of my own drummer. I've also discovered that just because I happen to like a certain song or playlist, doesn't mean that others want to hear it sung badly as I cruise by them.

Once in a while, I enjoy swimming, too. Let's be real here, though. How many people my size enjoy going out in public in a bathing suit? Count me out of that statistic. Still, I suck it up because it really is a great workout and sweating isn't a big deal because I'm already soaked. Now that summer is just about here, I will add this to my list of activities.

Once my body gets more in-tuned with this daily activity thing, I hope to get back to something that I really enjoyed doing and burns a ton of calories: dance. Even as a moderately plus-sized gal, I could move with the best of them. I loved taking classes and even partnered up with my instructor as 1/2 of a pro-am competition team. Now, dance WAS an addiction for me. Fortunately, it was something that my DH enjoyed doing with me, up to a point. What he didn't like doing in class, he allowed me to continue learning with my teacher and was biggest cheerleader.

Today, it's not so pretty. I still got rhythm, but it's just harder to move the body to the beat.

Before I can perfect those dance steps, though, I gotta keep up with these babysteps back to an active lifestyle. The only way I'm going to accomplish that is to keep finding things that interest me and pacify my distracted mind long enough so I can work up a good sweat.

Guess I should schedule a time today for a walk....

or some weights...

or a swim...

or...

what was I saying again??