Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Comment by Sinistar on “Getting Past Your Excuses” – 3/6/2005 @ 7:25 pm

Okay, here’s my excuse for why I haven’t so much as waved to Maya in the past month.

The company I work for is on the brink of ruin, is in the midst of a split (half the assets were purchased by another company), and the IT guy resigned. So, for the past month, I have been promoted from web server admin to Director of IT, requiring me to show up early and work late. I suppose I could wake up earlier to get my workouts in, but I’m epileptic, triggered by sleep deprivation, so I try to be careful about that. I could probably work out in the evenings, but by the time I get home, make dinner, spend some time with my son, and say hello to my wife, it’s already late. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights, I don’t even really get to say “Hello” since my wife has to go to sleep early while I stay up late monitoring our son (who has cerebral palsy and a tracheotomy – we need to listen out for him to make sure he is suctioned when needed) so she can get a few hours of sleep before she has to be up from 1AM to 11:30PM the next night (which is when our home health nurses come in for their shift).

I was managing to get in 30 minutes of exercise a day before the work situation exploded, but right now, I don’t even know where I’d fit it in.

Though, I guess I could have exercised in the time it took me to write all this. 🙂

Sinistar,

I just got your comment on Getting Past Your Excuses. All I can say is that you need help. I don’t know if you have family in town that could help you, but that might be an option. Another option is a second shift of home health nurses. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is admit that you need help, but if it was me, I’d be asking my family to help me or even ask my mother-in-law to move in with me.

You have two people who depend on you. To take care of them, you need to take care of yourself first. If you die at a young age because of a heart attack, they will be all alone in this world.

It’s obvious to me that you are tired and stressed beyond belief. Exercise will help relieve some of that stress and eating healthy will too (although I’ve noticed that it only relieves my stress about eating…).

I would recommend tracking everything you do for one day. Just make a list of all the things that you do (reading email, surfing the Internet, cleaning, watching TV, etc.) Just keep a log of what you do. When I did this, I set my watch to beep every 15 minutes and I would write down what I did those last 15 minutes. Only do this for one day, but try to keep your day as realistic and typical as possible.

After you’ve gathered this data, see if there is any place that you can squeeze in 30 minutes of exercise. What about your lunch hour? Bring your gym clothes, change, and run outside the office for 30 minutes. If you get a full hour, there’s just enough time to change back into your work clothes and eat a healthy lunch. Your lunch hour is just an example. You’ll have a better idea when you’ve taken a hard look at your day where you can squeeze in exercise.

You deserve 30 minutes a day. It’s essential for your health. You’re worth the time it takes to get and stay healthy. Your exercise doesn’t have to be Dance Dance Revolution or Yourself! Fitness. It can be taking a walk with your wife or riding your bike to work instead of driving. It doesn’t matter what kind of exercise as long as you schedule it into your day and protect that time. Guard it as if your life and the life of your family depended on it, because frankly it does.

You can do this!

Laura