Where Did The Week Go?

I suddenly realized I haven’t blogged in a few days. Sorry about that. Everything’s fine, I’ve just been a bit overloaded.

On Memorial Day, I finally got around to joining a local health club, and now I’m trying to figure out how to work regular exercise into my day to day routine. The club membership came with three free “starter” sessions with a personal trainer, which were more than a little intimidating, but at least now I have a nice workout plan all mapped out for me. Problem is, it takes me almost 90 minutes to get through the whole thing, plus changing clothes & shower time — that’s a 2-hour block of time for each session. Trying to fit that into my current schedule, especially on work days, has been a little disruptive.

I’m hoping that once I get more settled into a routine and comfortable with how to use all the damn machines, then I’ll be able to get it closer to an hour than 90 minutes, but for now it’s a real pain. Even if I leave work by 5:30, I’m not home and ready for dinner until well after 8PM. Since you’re not supposed to eat for at least 3 hours before going to sleep, the only way I can eat dinner at all is because I’m a night owl who stays up for the Daily Show & the Colbert Report. On the flip side, trying to get a 90-minute workout done in the mornings would mean hitting the gym before 7AM; and I am not at all good about getting out of bed that early.

I’ve never been much for health clubs before, so hopefully I’ll find a way to make this work for me. Ideally I’d like to get to the club 4 out of 7 days a week, which I think is a goal that’s both reasonable, and likely to actually produce some results over time. But if I can’t get the workout down to about 60 minutes, I suspect I’ll have to do the bulk of my exercise on the weekends, which means less results over time.

I have no illusions that I’ll be able to turn myself into a muscled-out fitness goddess; I find working out far too boring for that. Getting into better general shape and turning a few pounds of fat into muscle would be nice, though.