Giving it a little umph!

The difference between try and triumph is just a little umph!
~ Marvin Phillips

You know those days when you just feel blah, when you don't care about anything, when you just don't feel like doing anything? Those are the days when going for a walk or to the gym are the last things on your mind. Unfortunately if you have too many of those days in row, they tend to snowball into this big thing called a week. I know! Shocker right?

This is exactly what I did the last couple of weeks. I had one whole week where, other than my normal bimbling around during the day, I pretty much sat on my backside. I wasn't working, I wasn't getting out for exercise. I sat and played on the computer or read my book or had a not at all deserved Nanna Nap. The next week, I only went swimming twice. And I didn't put as much effort into the swim as I normally do. I had been swimming 80 lengths every day and working hard at every single one of those lengths. But not last week! Oh no, I just kind of drifted along in the water.

The result? Two weeks of gains. I gained 500 grams the first week and just brushed it off with a shrug. That right there was my first mistake. Shrugging it off instead of taking it as the warning it should have been. This week, I had a gain of 1.2 kgs. I stood there at the scale and tried to laugh it off, tried to say it was because I was wearing my jeans instead of my normal light weight pants, when in actual fact all I wanted to do was scream.

I'd love to say that there was stuff getting in the way of my exercise time. I wish I could say that I'd been the model of restraint as far as eating is concerned, but it wouldn't be true. That's not to say I was eating everything in sight, I even stayed within my points every day. But there probably should have been more fruit & veg.

The big thing is the exercise though.

The higher your energy level, the more efficient your body. The more efficient your body, the better you feel and the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results.
~ Anthony Robbins

Ok, so I'm not the biggest fan of Tony Robbins (I think he's a bit of a loud mouth schmuck) but in this case he has a point. We've all heard it before but for many of us, myself included, it goes in one ear and out the other. I even PROVED his point these past couple of weeks and I still went "Huh!" when I read that quote.

When I exercise regularly I am less inclined to scream at my children like I'm some depraved escapee from the local asylum. The endorphins that the workouts produce keep me going til bed time when I collapse in exhaustion.

When I get my butt out the door for a walk, I take my iPod and tune into my own little world. I will walk in just about any weather (though I'm not partial to the hot sun), and even the rain doesn't faze me. By the time I get home, I've had enough time immersed in my own thoughts to sort out any problems and to walk away any stress that I was carrying around.

More than anything, when I exercise regularly, I feel better! I don't GET those blahs that I was talking about earlier. My body feels better, my brain feels better.....my SOUL feels better. My kids notice that I am nicer to them, my husband realizes that he hasn't been yelled at that day. Sad, but true.

So what do you do if you had a few days or weeks where, like me, you had the blahs and didn't do anything.....and ended up gaining?

You get back on the proverbial horse and gallop off into the sunset!!

I know, easy for me to say from behind the keyboard right? Well let me tell you folks, I walked up a big ass hill AGAIN yesterday morning. The kids' school was doing it for the end of term and off I went. I rivaled the colour of a tomato by the time I got to the top, but I did it.

Today, I'm going for a swim. Tomorrow, I'll walk.

Giddy-up pony!

So what are YOU doing to add a little UMPH?