10 things I learned by not exercising

1. Regular exercise leads to better sleep.
2. Even moderate exercise can make the difference between weight loss and weight gain.
3. Layin' around like a sloth begets more layin' around like a sloth.
4. Exercise leads to healthier eating habits. Who wants to eat a chocolate chip cookie when it will wipe out 45 minutes of sweaty exertion on the treadmill?
5. Exercise excuses you from 30 to 60 minutes a day of hearing "MOM! MOM! MOM! Can you..?."
6. Exercise can make simple things like climbing 45 stairs to your office seem like a piece of cake.
7. Exercise is contagious. When people find out you have an exercise habit, they want to join in.
8. Exercise means you like seeing yourself in pictures better.
9. Exercise makes shopping for clothes more fun.
10. Sweating and heavy breathing from exercise is much better than sweating and heavy breathing from just being fat.

Tomorrow. I'm back at it. Honest.

Friday Frags & Leftovers: Did I really say/do/eat that?

Ladies & gents -- It's pre-7am on a Friday morning which means it must be time for Friday Fragments and Friday Night Leftovers (which at this time of day really should be Thursday night leftovers, but I won't split hairs). Thanks once again to our gracious hosts Mrs. 4444s and Danifred.

On this very dark and too-cold-for-Spring-Break Friday morning, I'm asking myself, "Did I really say/do/eat that?!"

Say: It's a tradition at our kids' school that the 7th graders host a graduation reception for the 8th grade class. Guess who volunteered to coordinate that? Yep. Yours truly. Did I really say "yes" to that request?

Do: I finally got my butt back to the gym. With Mike being in the hospital and then unable to drive for a while, it was too easy for me to stop going. It felt good to be back, but did I really go two whole weeks without setting foot in the gym?

Eat: The last of the Girl Scout cookies are gone, finally. None in the freezer. None hidden in the pantry. But, did I really have to polish off an entire sleeve of Thin Mints just to get them out of here?

Say: Are you ever just on the edge of total frustration and you say something you ordinarily wouldn't? I told one of my kids to "shut up" this week -- twice. In the world of good mommyhood, that's practically a felony. Did I really say that to my kid? Guilty, as charged.

Do: Last night at the Mexican restaurant with my girlfriends, I carried on a "conversation" with the waiter. I had no idea what he was saying and I don't think he knew what I was talking about. But we both smiled and laughed and nodded our heads like we knew exactly what the other person meant. Did I just advance international relations in my little corner of the world?

Eat: Burrito. Chips & salsa. Queso. Guacamole. Coronas, with lime of course. ¿Yo comí realmente todo el eso?

Kicking my can all over the place

A little more than 3 weeks into the Better U challenge, I'm feeling like I could be in a Queen music video..."kicking your can all over the place!"

It's all good and I'm (gasp!) beginning to find that I enjoy the exercise. But just when I start to feel victorious about being able to go for 40 minutes on the treadmill, the trainers over at Life Time Fitness hand me a new challenge that reminds me how far I have to go.

This week's? The innocuous-sounding "group workout." Read about how I fared over at the Better U blog.

Does anxiety burn calories?

For my thoughts on meeting the personal trainer for the first time, visit the Go Red Better U Challenge blog.

Pigs in the sky

There must be pigs flying somewhere because, for the third day this week, I just finished exercising. If you follow me on Twitter or are my Facebook friend, this won't be news to you, but I thought I'd let my 4th Frog friends in on my secret.

Now, I realize there are millions of people who get up and exercise every day without feeling the need to announce it to the world. But people, I'm after some positive reinforcement here. Exercise does not thrill me, what with all the heavy breathing and sweating and sore muscles. However, I've started a personal campaign to not die before I turn 40, so I figure exercise has to be part of the package.

And let me 'fess up about the term "exercise." I am not hitting the gym. I am not doing Jazzercise. I am not lifting weights. I am lacing up my tennies and going for a walk around the neighborhood. That's as far as I can go right now. By the way, if you live in my neighborhood and are leaving home early in the morning, please watch out for me. I tend to walk the first 5 or 10 minutes with my eyes mostly closed until I can wake up a bit.

Truth be told, I'm kind of enjoying this exercise thing. Well, not so much the aforementioned heavy breathing and sweating part, but the quiet and solitude part. I always thought I should find a neighbor to go walking with me in the morning, but I like having that time to let my brain hang out.

I've been walking sans iPod since I leave mine at work. Plus, then I'd have to hold it as I'm walking and my carpal tunnel would act up and it would become more of a distraction. Unless I pulled a "mom" and tucked it into a fanny pack, which would totally embarrass my kids -- even if they aren't with me while I'm walking. So, instead I sing (mostly to myself), I pray, I run through things I need to do (though I'm trying to keep that to a minimum).

Interestingly, walking with me, myself and I has been somewhat of a mental exercise as well. I find that the quicker my pace, the more frenzied my thoughts become. So I try to keep a good pace while keeping my mind slowed and thoughtful. It's not as easy as it sounds.

Now I realize that I'm going on as though I've got some experience or expertise to share about exercise. And I realize that it's only been three days, days on which the weather has been wonderfully cool. (Can I keep this up mid-August when it's 80 degrees at 7am?). I don't mean to come off smugly or all "Woohoo! Look at me, I'm all that and a bag of fat-free, salt-free pretzels."

I just figured you might like an explanation for the pigs flying by your window.

Word to the Wide 4.0

When you take your son to cross country practice, wear your sneakers so you can walk around the track with the other parents. Otherwise, you might feel self-conscious about being chubby and the only one sitting on her duff chatting on the cell phone while everyone else is exercising. Or keep your sandals on and stay in the car with a milkshake.

Want some more wide wisdom?

• Word to the Wide 3.0
• Word to the Wide 2.0
• Word to the Wide

Word to the Wide 3.0

You know it's time to go on a diet when your belly fat keeps re-setting the count on your pedometer. I walked almost two miles yesterday and the count on my pedometer was 366 steps because my bouncing belly kept hitting the re-set button.

For more words to the wide, check out the original and WTW 2.0.

Mountain reflections

Now that the oxygen has fully returned to my brain -- it only took about 48 hours -- I have some more thoughts about our Stone Mountain hike that didn't make it in to my original post.

First of all, you know those certificates that I was so excited for the the kids to get so they could show their friends at school that they did indeed climb a mountain? Yeah -- I was in such an altered state, i.e., struggling to regain my breath, that we forgot to get them once we reached the top. I do have a penny that we made in one of those penny press machines. It says "I climbed Stone Mountain!" and shows a fit-looking guy. Funny, there was not one that pictured a short, apple-shaped woman.

Second, if you recall, we took a picture of the kids at the base of the mountain. They were standing in front of a sign that listed rules and guidelines to consider before making the climb.

Maybe I should have read those before starting our ascent. They are too hard to make out in that picture, so let me help you:

GUIDELINES FOR HEALTH & SAFETY WHEN CLIMBING STONE MOUNTAIN:

1. If you have ever considered applying to be a contestant on NBC's The Biggest Loser, you might want to re-think climbing this mountain.
2. If bending over to tie your shoes leaves you a little breathless, this might not be the activity for you.
3. If your idea of exercise is going to the freezer for seconds on ice cream, consider riding the Sky Tram to the top of Stone Mountain.
4. If the last time you climbed this mountain was as a child and you remember it being easy, take some time to consider the difference in your physical stamina then and now.
5. If you take any type of medication for mood disorders, your desire to climb this mountain may be a symptom of your general craziness or other mental instability. You should turn back now and call your doctor for an increased dose of medication.
   

It's just a little hill...

The one thing that I wanted to do for sure when I planned this trip to see my brother and his family was to go to Stone Mountain. When I was a little girl, my aunt and uncle lived in Stone Mountain and we made a couple of trips to the park for a walk up the mountain.

The mountain is the largest piece of exposed granite in the world. As if that weren't enough, there is a memorial carving on the side of the mountain that depicts three Confederate heroes of the Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee and Lt. General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. The carving was done over a period of 60 years.

How cool it would be if my kids could come back from Spring Break and tell their friends that they climbed a mountain on their vacation. Once they reached the top, they would get a certificate that said "I climbed Stone Mountain!"

Plus, it would only cost $8/car to get into the park and walk the mountain trail. (Taking in the other attractions -- most of which aren't open for the season yet anyway -- is considerably pricier.)

A trip to Stone Mountain, I reasoned, would be economical, physically active and memorable. Turns out I was right on all three counts.

With my sister-in-law Erin staying behind to work, my brother Jeff and I loaded the five kids in the van and headed for our destination. Most of them were excited at the prospect of climbing the mountain, except Jack who slept the whole way there and Annie who doesn't get excited about the prospect of most anything that can be construed as exercise.

"Oh, Annie, it's just a little hill," I assured her.

Here they are at the base of the mountain walk-up trail:

Immediately, I was surprised at how the walk-up trail was more level in my memory. I think my brother thought the same thing. Of course the last time he went up, he wasn't carrying a three-year-old in his arms.

About 100 or so yards up the trail, I was the one asking "are we almost there?" The kids did a great job of stopping to wait for me (and Jack and Jeff) to catch up. Annie kept telling me to "channel my inner Jillian (trainer from the Biggest Loser)."

Adding to my breathlessness, Jeff and I kept laughing -- at how ridiculously out of shape we are, (though really more me than he), at how the kids were practically taking the mountain at a run, at how much more of the mountain we had to climb.

Thank God I was the one with the camera. It gave me an excuse to stop every so often to "take a picture," which actually translates to "gasp for air." Charlie found his name carved in the granite:

Then we found a cool caterpillar. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have said "Neat!" and moved on. But I was happy to stop and snap several pictures just long enough for the jello-y feelings in my legs to go away.

I'm not sure how far into our ascent we were when I took this video. Far enough that the oxygen deprivation of my brain caused me to not realize that I was shooting the video sideways. So turn your head a bit:

Shortly after this video was shot (I think), this was the view:

By this point, I wasn't even pretending that I was taking this all in stride. I was definitely sucking wind and there was no point in hiding it. I laughed at how in my head I am not nearly as fat and out of shape as I am in real life. I also began mentally blogging the whole experience.

"Look at it this way, Amy, your kids will remember this forever," my brother said.

"Yes," I replied. "They will forever remember the day their mother died on the side of a Georgia mountain!"

Hey, if I was going down, I was going down laughing. A little while later, we were maybe 2/3 of the way up. A couple was coming down the mountain.

"Are we almost there?" I practically begged.

"In distance, yes. But not in effort. The next part is the hardest part of the climb." I considered throwing myself off the side of the granite to end the misery there.

If you look closely in the picture below, you will see two things. The first are the yellow stripes, marking the way to the top. They will be important later. The second is a set of metal handrails (just left of center) to help you climb this VERY steep part of the trail.

I practically dragged myself up the slope holding on to those handrails. It might have been easier if I could have stopped laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. Of course Charlie and Robbie walked right up the center of the handrails, barely holding on at all.

I guessed that this was the toughest part of the climb, seeing as they provided those handrails. Well, I guessed wrong. The next part was almost insurmountable. Annie asked if I wanted to stop there and wait for them to come back. I declined, determined to finish the climb and afraid that I might pass out and roll all the way back down if I stopped.

Charlie was the first to make it up, with the other kids following closely behind.

Remember those yellow stripes leading the way? By this part of the trail, I was literally willing myself to make it to the next yellow stripe and then resting there for a minute. And crazily, I did begin channeling my inner Jillian. I think it was not so much determination as hallucination.

But I persevered and made it! I wish this picture looked a little more victorious. But I was lucky to be upright at all:

I was so happy to have reached the top that I went in and promptly plunked down $23.20 to buy tickets to ride the Sky Tram back down, rather than hiking our way back to the base. It was the best money I've spent on this trip!

After we'd left Stone Mountain Park, we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. This was the view from the parking lot up to the entrance located on the front of the building:

"Why is everything in Georgia so steep?" Charlie asked.

Good question.