The Unexpected Happens

I have been looking forward to the beginning of a new year for quite some time. It’s a chance for a fresh start, a time for renewing my mental focus, and a time for getting serious about losing the pregnancy weight that I gained having my son Lance. (You’d think that he would have weighed fifty pounds at birth, the way the pounds came on during the pregnancy!)

I know there are people who are not into New Year’s resolutions for multiple reasons. They don’t want to change anything perhaps; maybe they don’t want to set themselves up for failure; who knows, maybe they really are perfectly on track with their goals every day and there’s no need for improvement. I’m not one of those people. I want to better myself constantly.

It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with myself. I guess it’s more that I like setting goals and challenging myself. Mix that with my desire to try new things and you have for yourself a woman who sets a goal for herself and keeps it.

Well, tries to keep it. Sometimes the unexpected gets in the way. For instance, my goals for this month were stacked pretty solidly with work-outs and food-journaling in order to develop habits that will help me get rid of the post-partum weight. The third day in, Lance got sick. Close behind him was my 2-year-old daughter Eden. While kids getting sick might mean they would sleep more, in my case it just meant a long, sleep-deprived night, and grumpy kids in the morning. A grumpy mommy too.

I’m not exactly jumping up and down with excitement to get to the gym today. In fact, there’s a part of me that wants to skip it altogether. I have a good excuse, right?

This is the part where I need that ounce—or giga-ounce—of determination. Days like these are why I made a goal in the first place. Commitments are made for times when it is not easy to stay on track. If I were always motivated to exercise, I wouldn’t have needed to make a commitment in the first place—I would just glide into being healthy.

So regardless of how tired I am, or how awful my day has been, I am going to get some exercise in!