Swimming twice a week has been working out pretty well for me. I have been going on Mondays and Thursdays most weeks, different days if the schedule requires. I'm optimistic we can increase it to 3x/week after 2x has become an ingrained habit. This morning as I hurried to my car -- I went before Mark had to leave for work -- I was thinking about magazine articles on "finding the time to exercise." They always have lots of tips, but never the tip that turned out to do it for me. For example, from this page:
- "Once you have the motivation, you will have the time... define your goals. Be very specific and very realistic." (What, "I want to exercise twice a week" is not specific and realistic enough?)
- "Wake up a half hour earlier." (We all know how reliable that is with co-sleeping nurslings.)
- Run with a friend. (OK, so now we have two mothers' busy schedules to coordinate...)
Or from here:
- "Use the childcare at the local gym." (This sorta works. It works for two of my children. But the youngest is despondent when left there, despite plenty of effort on our parts to get her comfortable. I won't let her cry for an hour, and neither will the YMCA staff, God bless them -- they will fetch a crying child's parents post haste.)
- "Put the baby in a stroller and go for a walk." (Well, I can do that, but it's hard to get up to a steady pace when there's also a seven- and four-year-old to manage. It's fine for a pleasant stroll but not for serious exercising. And what do you do in Minnesota in the winter?)
- "Go for a hike with your baby in a front carrier or sling... Make sure your baby is well supported — a sling is fine for a walk around the block but not for a more rigorous urban walk or a hike through the hills." (HAHAHA okay this site has lost me, clearly the author doesn't know what she's talking about. Anyway, again, I love hiking, but all that stopping and waiting and coaxing and cajoling a tired four-year-old is not great for keeping your heart rate up. The only kind of hiking I've found good for exercising both mom and little kids is a hilly route with a lot of neat rocks to climb on, and the closest one like that is about an hour away.)
(Wait, while I was googling around, I did find a pretty cool stroller gadget that some of you with medium-and-little kids might like. check this out...)
And then there's all that "you have to do it for yourself... make time for yourself..." me me me talk in a lot of motivational articles. This has never worked to get me exercising. For one thing, if my husband takes the children for an hour, there are a hundred things I could do "for my self" besides exercise: take myself out to eat at a nice restaurant, go to a coffee shop with a good book, get my hair cut, catch up on school planning to buy more time later, blog, etc.
For another thing, I'm not convinced it's a healthy attitude for me to adopt, the "I need to decide to do this FOR ME" attitude. For some women, who tend to be very giving, selfless, and generous, yes, cultivating the habit giving one's self permission to do a thing for their own well-being is important. But some of us, ahem, have never really had difficulties putting ourselves first, and motherhood is the main training ground for the "love your neighbor" thing. I'm not convinced it's a good idea for me to start doing anything new FOR ME because I'm still hanging on to a lot of FOR ME already and am trying to let go of it.
So. Here is the tip -- it's really two parts -- that tells how I managed to swim twice a week:
I asked my husband to make a commitment with me, for the good of the family, to give me an hour at the gym twice a week.
I guess it's sort of understandable why magazines with names like, oh, I don't know, SELF, wouldn't be printing tips that amount to "Ask your husband to let you go to the gym." It is pretty antithetical to the "do it for me" mindset. I should add, by the way, that it's not "instead of" active whole-family outings like weekend hikes, it's in addition to them. But let me take this apart a bit, and show you why it worked so well.
- The first part is the "good of the family" mindset. Instead of me doing it for me, or even him doing it for me, Mark and I together are making this commitment for our whole family. It is obviously better for the whole family when I get some exercise every week. They say it lowers my stress and helps me sleep better: everybody wins. It improves my odds of living longer, which is also good for everyone, especially Mark. It sets an excellent example for the children. And it helps us meet our family goal of being active together as a family, because often we go to the gym as a family.
- The second part is the asking for a commitment from him. Mark is a sensible guy and if I ask for something that I really want and that's good for our family, I can trust him to provide it even if it's a sacrifice for him. But he can't read my mind; he needs me to ask for that particular block time when he must be in charge of the children. And because it's a recurring commitment, we have to schedule it each week, together. Along with "When are we going to do the shopping this week?" and "Who is going to take Oscar to his Wednesday night class this week?" we have to ask, "Which two days am I going to get to the gym, and what time?" Once again, this is good for the family -- it's a weekly checking-in between Mark and me, it's a thing I'm grateful he's agreed to do for me, and it's setting a good example for the children.
- The third part is receiving that commitment from him as a gift and using it the way we agreed on -- giving it back, so to speak. I asked for those two hours a week for a reason, a reason that was -- I said this before -- "for the good of the family." I am accountable to that reason. I can't use them to get a haircut, or go shopping, or sit and read a book (unless on an exercise bike). No matter how urgent, they aren't allowed to displace this specific commitment that Mark and I have made to each other. Not only must I use the time for the purpose we planned, I also have to use the time efficiently -- five minutes to get into my suit, fifteen minutes to shower afterwards, means only forty minutes in the pool, and that in turn means that if I want that workout to be a good one, I have to get better at swimming so I can swim more yards in my allotted 4o minutes.
Interestingly enough, this "tip" also happens to fulfill some of the chirpy tips at those other sites. "Tell another person about your plans." "Schedule exercise into your week." "Go to the gym with a friend" (in this case, Mark, who does his time with the kids in the kids' area and then goes to run after I come back from the pool).
And doesn't it seem to be a good metaphor for marriage, too?
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