The Things You Do for Love

With both of us working and having three children to maneuver through the world, our conversations have been reduced to twitter-like snippets before we start the bedtime routine. Not that my husband John and I have ever been ones to delve deeply into moody discourses on, well, anything. We are too different to do that. He’s a Republican. I’m Independent. He’s from the South. I’m more Southern than Northern now, but you can still here that flat “a” when I say, “Gap”. My profession requires me to move constantly, to stay fit and to motivate others to find joy in exercise. In John’s job, it is mandatory to sit in his chair, blankly staring at a computer monitor, with a trace of drool dotting the corner of his mouth. He is a programmer. I am convinced they strap themselves in for the day and are let free for potty, lunch and the drive home. Somehow our marriage works, with minimum finger-pointing and sniggering.

John is coming up on a big birthday. I’m hoping he sees turning forty as an opportunity to start living some healthful habits, if not for himself, then for his kids. I have visions of him waking up early to go for a quick run before eating his Kashi and driving to work in a hybrid car. Since this is such a lovely dream, I’m throwing in the new Donald Pliner pumps for me and an island Christmas vacation for the family. Dream big.

For his birthday, I’m going to charter an off-shore fishing trip for him. He’ll love it. I’m also getting him a treadmill. He’ll love it as much as he’d love a root canal. Sans drugs. This treadmill is the last frontier of exercise for John. I have encouraged him to get back to playing tennis and he, sounding like my kids, “Has no one to play with.” DVDs, a health club membership, a MALE trainer because, apparently, he cannot train with me. I’ve tried them all. There is a laundry room full of gym-quality free weights that are begging him to pick them up and give them some love. He claims they are not his size. After five years of virtually no exercise, he’s right. I don’t have his size. 2-lb weights can’t be found in the laundry room.

I’m getting bitter.

So, along with the trip, he’s going to get on the treadmill. He will be able to out push-up me and he will run the Crescent City Classic with me come Easter. Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not a shrew (most of the time), I just happen to know his family health history. Alphabetically, it starts with Brain Cancer and roams on down through every other Cancer imaginable. It is sprinkled liberally with obesity, high blood pressure and gastro-intestinal issues. Clearly we cannot cure these diseases with a trot on the treadmill; however, it is a start. I’m sure the kids would like him around to see them get married. I’d like to have someone to share what’s left of our retirement funds.

The treadmill is my own personal Hail Mary pass. This is it. The beginning of the end of the game. He’s going to love the fishing trip. I can’t say that about the treadmill, but with the good comes the bad. And of course, I’ll feel like the bad guy showing up with exercise equipment, but what else can you do? Like holiday dinners at the in-laws, it’s one of the things you do for love.

You’re Welcome.

Check out Julie's face - she HATES me right now.

I say it on a daily basis. “You are welcome.” “It’s my pleasure.” “No, really, you’re welcome.”

It usually comes after I hear something like, “I hate you.” Or, “I couldn’t move my shoulders at all yesterday.” And it always comes after, “My back feels so much better” or “I’m down another 3.5 pounds” and “I made it through the whole race.” It’s not that I’m taking credit for their accomplishments. On the contrary, those “wins” are all theirs. What I am doing is one of two things: 1. Either reminding them that they should be proud of their hard work – the same work they asked me to help them with and worse for them, pay me to do. And 2. Taking a little of the owness off them and letting them put it on me. I’m happy to oblige.

Some of you masochists – and you know who you are – want to be able to say, “She made me do it.” They want their friends and family to imagine their trainer standing above them on the Pilates Reformer, whip in hand, barking orders in blood red lipstick. I don’t even own a whip. Maybe a piece of string that probably goes to a Bat Man costume somewhere in the den, but, that’s made for a four-year-old and I’m way too tall for it.

The reality is a lot of us need encouragement to exercise. Some of us need even more than encouragement, like goal-setting, hearing Jillian-like orders barked at them or even text reminders to get up and get to the studio or gym. The exercise-industry is a billion dollar empire thanks to that part of the population that needs a buddy to motivate them. “Buddies” come in the form of trainers, exercise DVDs, sports clubs, jumping ropes – whatever tool or person that you rely on to get you going. Here’s a challenge: find something this week (from today to next Friday or whenever you read this) that is a new form of movement for you. If you walk, try rollerblading; if you do Cardio Aerobics class, try Spinning; if you do nothing, try SOMETHING. You get the idea. Then write back and tell me about it.

I love to experience movement, whether it’s Pilates, running, cycling, dancing in the grocery store to a funky 80’s song I haven’t heard in years when no one is watching, whatever. But I do need someone to tell me to divide and conquer the piles on my desk or to tackle the list of to-do items that are written on my hand because I’ve lost too many post-its in my life. For me, those tasks are torture and I imagine my clients feel that same anxiety at times when faced with exercise. The key is to just do it. Even if it’s for ten minutes. More often than not, those ten minutes will turn in to 20 or even 30 once you are up and moving. Maybe you need to hire a trainer. Maybe you need to buy a DVD and bounce around your living room by yourself. We’ll all be interested in different types of exercise and the most important part of the process is finding something you like. If all Step Classes were the only form of exercise left in the world, you’d find me on my doorstep, too fat to get through the entranceway. Find what works for you.

And once you do, let me know. Then I’ll get to say it to you, too: You’re Welcome.

Burning some allergies

Running it on the beach

Maria, Renee and another little girl whose name I can’t remember knew how to roll in the mid-1970’s. We’d wake at the crack of dawn, impatiently scarf something down for breakfast and run out the door as soon as hair and teeth were brushed. My parents wouldn’t see me until lunch, then we’d disappear until dinner or until I’d hear a third “Keeeeerrrrrieeeee” from the front porch.

We weren’t doing any illegal or even interesting to anyone but us. It consisted of a lot of running, jumping, telling one another we weren’t friends any more then forgetting about it two seconds later and playing Super Heroes. I was Super Girl. That’s another story. The point is, we were outside moving. We never called it “exercise” and certainly didn’t consider our heart rates, cholesterol levels or plyometric moves versus static strength.

I hadn’t really seen that creative use of constant movement in my own children. Frankly, it made me nervous. The Nauseda/Frey genes are fraught with…let’s just say “unmotivated” cells. Here I would be shoving them out the door urging them to, “Go play, go on the swing set, just go somewhere!” They’d wander in the driveway for a bit and come right back in. Until this weekend. The weather was a perfect 75 degrees and sunny. John and I didn’t have any pressing plans. No work. No birthday party circuit. And the combination of gorgeous days with below sea-level stress must have been the antidote to my kids’ seeming fear of soft grass and fresh air. They were out all day. Saturday and Sunday.

Sunday night we were having dinner and I commented on how nice it was to see them playing with their friends, using their imaginations and running around the block.

“Yeah, Mommy!” Mae looked over her plate. “We got lots of exercise and burned a lot of calories!”

SIDEBAR: Before anyone sends me to Child Protective Services, Mae and I had to have several talks about calorie expenditure vs. calorie intake. What our tummies need vs. what our tummies want. Basically, Mae was eating like a horse and I had to objectively explain to her how our bodies work.

I was kind of (read: totally) full of pride. She understood what I meant that day! The blank look and drool that had rolled down her chin was just a facade. Then Tucker chimed in:

“Yeah! I burned lots of allergies!”

It being pollen season and all, he might very well have burned allergies somehow. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t accurate with his terminology. What was important is that the two of them finally understood that being outside and moving felt good and, more importantly, was fun. They both fell asleep before 8:30 pm that night and then I was able to have fun. That, again, is another story.

So the question is, when is the last time you exercised and had fun? Running on a treadmill for miles at a time may be fun at times, but running outside on a trail with Led Zeppelin on the ipod is fun all the time. Kicking your way through a Body Combat class with your friends looking gangly and painfully unintimidating is a total ball. You want to come back week after week and experience that again. If you force yourself to repeat that Kathy Smith Step workout tape (yes, I meant tape) from 1990 you will never equate “fun” with “exercise”. Try something new. It doesn’t have to be monumental. Just go outside. Jump on a bike. Play super heroes with your kids. Just move and burn some allergies.