Rethinking Workout Times

I am typically a morning workout person.  During the school year, my routine is to wake early, before my sons and husband.  I pray, work, and drink lots of decaf prior to waking up the rest of the house.  After driving the kids to school, as many days per week as practicable, I meet a friend at the gym for an hour long workout.  The rest of the school day flies by filled with writing, web work, or other commitments.  After 2:30, I turn into driving Mom, homework helping Mom and cooking Mom.  I crash early most nights, preferring to be tucked in by no later than 10:30.  I fall asleep before my head hits the pillow.

During the summer, the schedule falls to pieces.  People sleep until all hours of the day, my sons cook "second dinner" at 11:30 pm many nights, and my workout buddy is busy with her own summer craziness.  My fitness routine becomes a little dicey, and it doesn't help that our Fresno heat squashes my motivation to walk outside.  It becomes a little too easy to say, "I'll hit the gym tomorrow…" and skip a day (or four).

This has been happening far too often for the past two weeks.  One of the problems with not working out is that I tend to get a little "edgy" and things that don't normally stress me out start to drive me crazy.  This was happening on Wednesday, when I was in a "martyr" state of mind from all of the football practice inconvenience that's been going on in this week.  Around 9:00 pm I realized that I had, yet again, not fit in time to exercise during the day.  So instead of plopping on the couch, I tied on my walking shoes and hit the pavement.

Revolutionary? Far from it!  Lots of people walk at night, but I'm not one of them.  Surprisingly, I discovered that I loved walking at that time of night.  The streets were silent, the heat was absent, and the sky was filled with stars.  I am such a creature of habit in so many ways – shaking up a few of my routines is a great thing.  The night walk has inspired me to look at my schedule with a little less rigidity and to be more open to using my waking hours more creatively.

Home-work for Today:

  • Thinking about walking or running at night?  Read this helpful article on Walking Safely at Night.
  • Rethink your fitness routine – does your schedule need a little "shaking up"?  Do you need to recommit to exercise?  Just do it!

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Blog posts from this week related to Health and Fitness

By

Lisa Hendey, Catholic wife and mom, is the founder and webmaster of www.CatholicMom.com and the author of A Book of Saints for Catholic Moms: 52 Companions for Your Heart, Mind, Body and Soul and The Handbook for Catholic Moms: Nurturing Your Heart, Mind, Body and Soul. Lisa writes for several online and print publications, enjoys speaking around the country and hosts the Catholic Moments Podcast. Visit her at LisaHendey.com.

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