Yes, I know exercise is essential to feeling good, becoming fit and hopefully losing weight. That doesn’t mean I have to like it and, truth be told, I don’t. Well, at least I didn’t. Last week, though, something clicked in my mind that helped me to see exercise isn’t the drudgery I’ve always made it out to be. Ever since, I’ve been exercising daily… although I try not to admit that to myself.

A little explanation first.

Shortly after giving birth to my second son I was a whopping 65 pounds overweight. I was still in my mid-30s at the time and how I looked affected many things in my life: my then-career as a trial lawyer, my confidence as a new wife and mother, and my feelings of social relevancy. So when it came to working off the weight I worked hard, going for daily 45-minute grueling aerobic sessions followed by a half-hour of weight-lifting on alternate days. Within six months I was down to the size 6 I’d worn pre-baby boy. Then I stopped.

Those hard core workouts, you see, were both exhausting and boring. I’d set a goal — reaching my old weight — and once I reached it my attention turned to other pursuits: gardening, learning to cook, decorating our first home and becoming a stay-at-home Mom. With a surprisingly busy schedule, and a very active baby turning into an even more active toddler, I just didn’t have time to do the work-out/stop sweating/shower-and-reapply makeup routine.

Flash forward, oh, eight years. (No, I’m not going to tell you how overweight I am now.) Having traded my legal career for freelance writing, looks no longer really affect my income. After ten years being wed to a man who thinks I’m beautiful even when I’m sick in bed with a cold and have snot running down my nose, I’ve come to realize that marital love is bigger than my dress size. (Which, admittedly, is bigger than I ever thought it would be.) My life is even more active than ever before, and so I’ve been telling myself for years that I’m just too busy to really make a regular habit of exercising.

Also, I hate it.

Then last week while stretching in front of the TV to work out a kink in my back I found myself actually enjoying the feel of my body moving. Touching my toes (which, yes, I can still do) brought a wonderful, electric tingle to my underused back muscles. Yoga’s downward dog position tugged on my hamstrings like someone pulling taffy. I sank to the floor, arched the back of my head toward my toes in the cobra position, and felt my spine working out knots I hadn’t even realized were there. A few more moves — most of which used my own weight as, well, weight — and I was wondering why I’d stopped exercising regularly.

Ten minutes into it, the phone rang.

After a brief conversation I “forgot” all about exercising (okay, I decided to do something productive work-wise), but the physical effects stayed with me for hours. I felt relaxed. Mellow. My muscles felt like loose rubber bands instead of tight little balls of constant dull ache. It felt, well, good.

But, I told myself, it wasn’t really exercise. I’d only stretched, after all, and I only did it for ten minutes or so. Why, I didn’t even break a sweat, so obviously it didn’t count.

The next morning, after dropping my son off from school, I came home and decided to stretch again before launching into my workday. Ten minutes into it I was feeling pretty good, and that’s when my gaze fell on a dusty exercise video I’d bought last summer.

At the time, I’d been attracted to the video’s concept: a DVD that lets you choose your target area, exercise intensity and workout length (anywhere from 4 to 40 minutes. (The video is 1-Minute Workout with Minna Lessig, by the way.) I’d used it a few times, found it both easy and enjoyable, and then… “forgot”. But there it was, waiting for me right as I was thinking that perhaps a few more minutes of exercise wouldn’t suck too bad. So I popped it in, did more crunches and lunges in four minutes than I’ve done in four months, and… the phone rang again.

Since then, I’ve come home on other mornings from taking my son to school and worked out with the video a few times. I’ve walked on my treadmill while blogging for 10 minutes here and there, too, although that definitely does bring on the sweat. I’ve even spent a few minutes doing floor calisthenics with and without my exercise ball (which, I’ve found, I’m more likely to use if I don’t put it away in the closet).

But I’m not exercising, at least not in the sense that I used to. I’m just moving around, loosening up my muscles and toning some of my flabbier parts, even if my scale seems to like it. A lot. (As in 4 pounds lost last week.) But I’m most assuredly not exercising. Honest. Because if I actually was exercising I’d feel obligated to think of it as, well, an obligation: something that I must do even when I don’t feel like it, and about which I must feel bad if I “forget”.

So, despite what it may look like, I am NOT exercising. I mean that.

I am, however, wearing a smaller size of pants today.

Whee!

Tags: busy schedule, half hour, losing weight, stay at home, workouts