Do I have the time to exercise?

I don't have the time...

By Namaste

I work a full time job in a factory. I have a forty five minute commute each way to get there and back home. I have a semi-useless husband and a house to take care of. I have five cats, and every day I have to remind them that they love me and don’t want to wander off and become feral. I have meals to cook, things to clean, shopping to do, and bills to pay.

There is also the issue that I also would like to have some time to do things that I enjoy. I like to relax a bit when I get home from working a full shift. I like to browse the intertubes. I enjoy watching shows that I have Tivo’ed. I like to play the MMORPG “City of Heroes. (yeah, I like to fight crime with my superpowers in my off time. Don’t tell anyone!) Oh, and I have a blog thingey that I’d sorta like to spend more time on. Given that I am a responsible adult who does take care of the responsibilities of my life, I don’t think that I’m being unreasonable in wanting an hour or so of “me” time once in a while.

So do I have the time to exercise for 40 minutes to an hour every work day? Do I have the time to cook healthy lower calorie meals? It would be so easy to say “No.” I would love to have that time to do the things I like to do, that I need to do. It would be easy. It would be a flat out lie, too. I make the time to do these things, every day, because I need to do so. It is as important to me as making my mortgage payment or keeping the cats from starving. If I didn’t make the time to do the things that help me manage my weight, I would not weigh less than 200 pounds. Heck, I wouldn’t weigh less than 250.

When I didn’t take the time to do these things, I weighed around 260-270. I felt awful. It was uncomfortable to live in my body. My left knee was in constant pain from my excess poundage. It was hard to squeeze into restaurant booths and movie theater seats. I didn’t sleep nearly as well as I do now. And, it was much, much worse mentally. I was deeply angry that my body looked and felt like that. I was deeply ashamed that I had let myself look that like. I was supersensitive about my weight, and if something would happen that would force me to confront the truth of it I would be in a foul mood for hours, if not days.

So do I have the time to do what I need to do to maintain my weight loss? Do I have the time to spend forty minutes on my elliptical when I get home from work? Do I have the time to cook my own food rather than hitting the drive thru on the way home? Is it worth an hour a day, more or less, to feel fantastic for the other 23 hours rather than feeling horrible?

I’ve heard from people who think that the answer to these question is “no”. They’ve made that choice for themselves, and they think that this is a reasonable, even unavoidable. But for my part, I haven’t noticed that worlds falls apart during the hour I take a day to make my life a joy to live, instead of painful burden.

I am sorry that I don’t have the time to write in this blog more often. But not that sorry.