The Best Exercise Is The One You Actually Do

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I started jogging again today.

And it was hard.

And I couldn’t understand why! I’ve done the Couch-To-5K thing probably five or six times, and I always look forward to the first few weeks, because I know that those initial workouts will be easy. I get to ease in with little bursts of jogging. It’s not until the tenth workout that I have to jog for more than ninety seconds at a time.

But today was hard. And afterward, as I was stretching, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Actually, it hit me like twenty pounds of bricks. I’m now twenty pounds heavier than the last time I tried to do a Couch-To-5K.

My husband and I decided to do a C25K last summer. For a few weeks I got up super early so that we could get our workouts in before he had to leave for work. And it was awesome! I’d never had a workout buddy before. I was in decent shape, and he wasn’t, so we were perfectly matched to run together.

But then I started to notice that my feet were hurting a lot. I had plantar fasciitis, and the doctor I went to advised me to stop jogging for six to eight weeks while it healed. Fuuuuudge.

I actually believed him that it would be gone in two months with some stretching. HA! After a few months with little improvement, I said fuckit and started jogging again. It felt great.

And then I came down with pneumonia.

When I finally felt OK enough to exercise again, I’d barely started when I had to have surgery to get my gallbladder out. That was a few days before Christmas. I wasn’t supposed to exercise for at least two months. And by then, it was the dead of winter and I just didn’t want to. My big comfy sweaters backed me up on this.

[bctt tweet=”The best exercise in the world won’t work if you don’t actually do it. ” username=”AmyOztan”]

So here I am, having gained twenty pounds since last summer. My spare tire, which used to look like it would fit on a bicycle, now looks like it would fit on a truck. Clothes are becoming an issue. And I just feel shlubby.

And when I was trying to decide what to do about it, I thought about all of the studies and advice that I’ve read over the years. It all says that I should focus my energy on lifting weights and forget the cardio. And I totally, 100% believe those studies.

The problem? I don’t do it. I’ve tried. Many times. Turns out the best exercise isn’t the one that burns the most calories or makes you the strongest, it’s the one that you actually make yourself do with some kind of consistency. And it’s time for me to admit that for me, jogging is it. Even though I don’t love it.

But the only thing that actually gets me out the door is having a race to train for.

I have a spotty record of training. In the six years since I struggled through a charity four miler in Central Park I’ve done five half marathons, a ten miler, three 10Ks, and more 5Ks than I can remember. Some of them I trained for really well. Some of them, not so much. But at one point I could jog for eight miles without stopping. I wasn’t setting any speed records, but I was moving.

So, I just signed my husband and myself up for a 5K, and then a 10K after that.

Today was day one of training. And it sucked. But it will get better. I mean, I don’t think it could get worse.