My descent from the wagon, the realization as to why, and my vow to do something about it

As the title says, and is probably evident from my lack of updates on the subject, I fell off the wagon. That said, I didn't fall so far off the wagon that I was being dragged behind it by my ankles. I didn't exercise as regularly as intended, however I didn't completely throw my diet out the window in that I gained 10 lbs. My weight stayed about the same, but still fluctuated a few pounds in either direction. So while there was really no forward momentum, fortunately there was no backward momentum either.

I'm not going to make excuses as to why I fell off the wagon. I'm not going to blame anyone else but myself for it. I'm not going to say the winds were blowing the wrong direction, or the stars weren't aligned quite right. What I will say is I have a pretty good idea why it happened. My priorities weren't what they should be, and I believe I could just never find a suitable balance between mother, wife, homemaker, page admin, gamer, lover of far too many hobbies, and sleep with only 24 hours in a day. When we couple this with that fact that I can be a bit lazy sometimes, and as I said before "my 360 controller [could] win out over running laps around my neighborhood almost every time." Playing video games is an enjoyable way to pass the time, while working out just felt like a chore, so it wasn't hard to sweep my motivation under the rug. Not to mention I later found out the Zombies, Run app didn't even remotely work like it should have on my phone, and since the devs dropped all Windows Phone support, it was never going to either. So I lost the one thing that would have made running tolerable. My heart wasn't in it anymore, and I just didn't care.

Last month my husband and I traveled a few states over to visit my in-laws, and were gone about a week. While I wasn't entirely looking forward to the trip to begin with, and had considered simply staying home by myself, I decided to go because I needed a change of scenery. I had also hoped this would be enough of a break in the day-to-day monotony that we could come home to a fresh start. When we got home, I felt a little bit better, but was still uncertain that anything was truly going to change. A few days later my uncertainty was justified as it seemed we quickly settled back into our old routines. I became frustrated, and any motivation I had was completely thrown out the window.

A few weeks later I decided to dust off the Kinect, so to speak, and start playing around with Your Shape Fitness Evolved again. Maybe the Kinect could make this endeavor fun again. I played a few games, went meh, and sat down and started scrolling through my facebook feed. Then a post by Devious Cosplay caught my attention. It was a Friday, so it was one of their #fitnessfriday posts that they had shared from another page called Superhero Fitness Challenge.

This led me to check out the page and as I started scrolling through the feed, something clicked. We have all seen those Beachbody before and after pictures where the people go from flabby to fabulous, but at the same time I just didn't find myself relating to those people. Maybe because they were "normal," or because they became these totally fitness obsess gurus where all their facebook updates were motivational pictures, healthy recipes, and links to their Beachbody Coach pages in order to buy Beachbody products. That just wasn't me. Working out wasn't fun or enjoyable to me, and I hate the "buy this product from me" type of posts. However as I scrolled down the page, looking through previous posts, seeing these geeky inspirations, seeing others who were just like me gave me a renewed motivation. That same day the UPS man dropped off my order of Popchips (they're about 3 PointsPlus, give or take depending on flavor, for a single serving bag for you Weight Watchers peeps. They're also really tasty), as did my issue of Fitness magazine (I had a free subscription).

This was just the universe lighting a much needed fire under my ass. I hopped off the computer, got out my stationary bike (which Amazon got back in stock a few days after my last ZAP entry), turned on my PS3, and started up Jetpack Joyride. Jetpack Joyride is a simple, yet highly addicting, game with one-button gameplay, and each round will only last a few minutes. Let's not forget that it's the grand old price of FREE. I decided to make my own workout game from it, which I merely made up as I went along. I also intend on working on it later down the line, and hopefully posting it for others to enjoy as well. It wasn't on par with an INSANITY workout, but it still got me off my ass and I felt better about myself afterwards. That was it, I decided to jump back on the wagon full force. *cough*

...starting Monday.

I'd give myself the weekend to get pumped, heal up from the massive soreness induced by my impromptu workout, figure out a schedule, and then dive in head first.

Monday came around and I originally intended to start a workout routine on Your Shape Fitness Evolved, but after the first session I realized how much of a lousy program it was for that. There was just too much time elapsing between exercises, there was no cooldown/stretch included in the workout routines themselves, the game merely pointed me in the direction of the Zen classes which consisted of just Yoga. One pose in particular, which was done more than any other pose, left my knees popping in a way I wasn't entirely comfortable with. Overall YSFE just left me frustrated, and necessarily sore, but not in a good way, due to the lack of post-workout stretching. I decided to put it back on the shelf, and popped in EA Sports Active 2 instead. I put fresh batteries in the heart-rate monitor, updated my profile info, and started up the three week cardio headstart program again. While I knew EA Sports Active 2 wasn't necessarily going to be fun, I knew it was a decent enough program. You go through your warm-up, then your core routine, and then you cooldown with some stretches. Before you started your routine you could opt out of specific exercises if you wished/needed to, and you can skip individual exercises during the workout if you needed to as well. This was a set-up that YSFE severely lacked, or at least one I didn't feel like dedicating the time to finding. I finished my workout, and felt a little bit better.

My workout schedule is now Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday while throwing in extra workouts as I feel like it. Generally this will include going through a routine on EA Sports Active 2, then hopping on either my stationary bike or my Gazelle (which I got secondhand for $40), while watching an episode of [insert show here]. I did say "generally" though, as this week and next are going to work a little different with my husband being on dayshift. You see, I don't like working out in front of other people, not even my husband. This is partially why I opt for working out in my living room instead of going to a gym, and this is also why I didn't work out today. (Lame excuse, I know.) I had intended on working out while he was at work, but he came home ridiculously early. So early, I wasn't even out of bed yet. -_- I also didn't work out on Friday, however that was because I tweaked my back on Thursday (before my workout) in such a way that moving around was rather bothersome. I opted to give my body the extra day to heal up, rather than risk making it worse.

Anyway, as such I'm changing my schedule up a bit. I'm going to attempt to get up with him, or at least before he leaves for work, and then get my workout in before the pip-squeak wakes up. Then after he gets home later in the afternoon, the pip-squeak will go in her room for "quiet time," then we'll do the bike/Gazelle portion of my workout together. This is great because I read in this month's issue of SELF magazine, I'll need to find the specific article to cite the source, but around 4pm your metabolism drops, so a late afternoon workout will help keep it going into the evening.

As for my workout shows; currently I'm finishing up season two of Game of Thrones, but haven't decided which show in my backlog I'm going to move onto next. Perhaps I'll restart Spartacus (all those hot bodies, talk about motivation!), or check out Mad Men since I haven't watched it yet. Though during the two weeks my husband is on dayshift and we're watching together, we've decided on season two of The Walking Dead. The season is short enough that we should be able to watch the whole thing, or at least the majority of it, before he goes back to his normal swing shift schedule.

Ugh... There was so much more I wanted to put into this entry, however it's already after midnight and I should already be in bed if I'm going to get up early with my husband. It doesn't help that this chick is not a morning person in the least, but rather more of a night owl.

In my next ZAP entry I'll try to go over some tips and ideas to try and help out if you feel like you're falling off the wagon yourself.

TL;DR - I fell off the wagon, figured out why, and hopped back on the wagon full tilt. No more excuses.

I got this. Now it's time for me to crawl into bed. Stay geeky my friends!

-Dawn