Recommitted

I have declared at various times over the past few years that I am re-committing myself to fitness, but I really mean it this time: from now on, I am dedicating myself to living a healthier lifestyle and exercising more than once a week. I actually started this crusade at the end of May, but I wanted to actually make it more than two days before publicly declaring myself back on the fitness bandwagon. Well, it’s official. I made a special Google Calendar and everything.

The kick in the pants that I needed came in the form of my annual medical checkup, at which I was informed that not only am I currently at my highest weight ever (YAY), my cholesterol is 240. If you’re not familiar with cholesterol readings, this is not good. It’s actually quite bad. I’ve always had high cholesterol, even when I was fourteen years old, ran every day, and didn’t eat meat, but 240 borders on terrifying.

So! For the past two weeks I’ve been exercising almost every day, re-acquainting myself with the gym, running twice a week with Joel, and picking up Bikram yoga. And I’ve lost two pounds!

There is only one problem with my happy road to healthy living: my gym has gotten rid of its cable. The only redeeming thing about this gym, besides its proximity to my office, was that they had a personal cable television for each cardio machine, allowing me to choose between Gilmore Girls, Law and Order, and NCIS reruns while I ran or ellipticized. Now my entertainment choices from 5-6pm are: news, news, Fox news, and this show called Wendy on UPN. Even with an MP3 player, these choices are unbearable. I’ve been asking each gym attendant I see if this is a permanent change or what, and I have yet to get the same answer from two of them. One guy told me he had no idea, another one pretended not to know what I was talking about (dude, I KNOW I’m not the only one distressed by this change), a third said he’d ask the management. A fourth guy told me that it was actually a good thing, because “you work out harder to music anyway.” That may be true in theory, but yesterday I watched the news ladies on WJZ feel each others foreheads to see who has Bieber Fever. I WANT MY GILMORE GIRLS BACK.

Comments

[Kristabella]

Download shows to your iPod/iPhone??

[Mom]

Let me apologize one more time for passing this on to you :) ... and exercise definitely helps but an equal component to lowering your cholesterol is diet (not losing weight diet, althought that too is helpful ... but healthy food choice-diet) we can talk about it this weekend.

[J. Aerts]

Jen, so fun ! Good for you! If you need a virtual workout buddy or anything, I'm your woman. Have you heard of dailymile.com ? It's a fun workout tracker.

[Aero cardio]

I do cardio exercising at home myself to lose some weight, which I'm also blogging about. Your blog is interesting.

[nancypearlwannabe]

Good for you! I've been so miserable lately that even running seems like a help. You can't cry when you feel like you can't even breathe!

[Angela Noelle]

Keep up the good work!! I've also been working on becoming healthier, and the bottom line is a life without bread and chocolate sucks. But I do feel better about myself!

[Aly]

Good for you Jen! I rarely watch stuff on the gym.. I just tune out with the iPod and that's it. Boring, I know, but it works for me... :D

[Life of a Doctor's Wife]

Oh man - no cable? I hate gyms with no individual cable. The last gym I belonged to had those public TV banks and they were always tuned to ridiculous things.

But hey! Good for you! Two pounds already!! You are awesome!

[beth]

Is the "wendy" to which you refer "wendy williams." If so, you should give her a shot. She is super entertaining, and says really crazy stuff (she's a staple on "the soup.")

So weird that no one at the gym will admit that they got rid of cable!