New Year, New Treadmill

As you can see from my last post, my routine got a little upset during the holidays, and I didn't keep up with my mental exercises from The Four Day Win. I was observing to myself this morning how quickly I reverted back to old thinking patterns. The Dictator wiped off her red lipstick and started shouting obscenities and insults about my plumpness and Wild Child purposely re-tangled her hair and went back to launching pizza cravings as retaliation for the mere thought of counting calories. The moral: the mental exercises really, really work, but only when conscientiously undertaken.

Husband and I bought ourselves a Christmas present, which we had had on layaway for a while. We'd been in the market for a number of weeks, but on Black Friday, we decided to shop around for a good deal on a great treadmill -- even though we didn't get around to shopping until late afternoon. Amazingly, we found an amazing deal, so last week, we brought home our new NordicTrack in the back of the van. Somehow, we hauled it up the stairs (I nearly blacked out, it was so heavy; as it was, I couldn't walk for quite a while because my thighs were completely jelly), and it's now the newest addition to our bedroom furniture. The idea was that Husband would exercise in the early mornings before leaving for work and I would use it for regular morning workouts and then as a means to take much-needed breaks from sitting at the computer for hours a day, writing. Further, I could multi-task my exercise with mental downtime by watching a show on Netflix. Although we haven't yet managed to move everything in the room to facilitate television watching with treadmill exercising, I have had a lot of success with reading and using the treadmill at the same time. What I never expected (and what veteran treadmill users are probably completely familiar with) is the sea-leg feeling you have after completing a workout and walking again on non-moving ground. Weird.

While Husband has enthusiastically dived into the workout/counting calories mode of getting fitter and healthier, I've had to be very careful about where I let my thoughts stray. His enthusiasm is contagious, but I know all too well that I need to continue moving through the mental preparations before I start actively limiting caloric intake. Seeing the success I've already had with changing my thoughts, I'm much less inclined to allow The Dictator to guilt me into what I know has never worked for me in the past, even if that's what nearly all the professional diet advise urges. We'll see how it goes.

For now, the entire family is enjoying our treadmill. Even Little Gary informs me he has to exercise and then walks a quarter of a mile to half a mile at a time.