E is for Exercise

E is for Exercise

Health Alert: Writing might make you fat.

As I sit writing this, noshing on my giant sized bagel smothered in cream cheese, guzzling my sugar filled coffee, it occurs to me that I spend a ridiculous amount of time sitting. Sitting, staring at a screen, and hunched into a spine altering position over a keyboard that promises to one day leave me with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

The tricky thing about writing books, is that it's not a 9-5 job for most of us. It it the forever nagging feeling that every spare minute should be spent increasing word count. You know that great writer advice: Butt in chair--Hands on keyboard. That is GREAT advice for increasing word count. The side effect is that when I'm not sitting at my desk, I'm thinking about how I should be.

And my desk is making me fat.

Now don't get me wrong, I do jog--sporadically. Like once a week; in all honesty it's probably more like once every two weeks. It's just enough to trick my brain into thinking I get to check that "moderately active" box on health inventories and online calorie counting calculators. It's the gentle lie I tell myself as the scale continues to rise, keeping a constant stride with my age.

Like many almost 40 women, I battle time. Not so much the getting older, I'm okay with that, but the insanity producing collective rush of all the EVERYTHINGS we manage day in and day out. We work full time (or more); raise kids and mange their ridiculous schedules; manage our houses; manage our fiances; manage our marriages; and some of us are trying to manage our dreams--like writing.

Is it any wonder that we end up too exhausted to manage our bodies? Even though we KNOW we would feel so much better if we could just make ourselves get out the frickin door with a pair of running shoes attached.

So, E is for Exercise...and last night, I bought a treadmill at Sears.