What Do Working Out & Writing Have in Common?

As I circled the parking lot at the gym yesterday and then waited in line for a treadmill, this piece I wrote for the Writer Mama e-zine a while back came to mind:

I have been a regular exerciser for years. Don’t hate me; it’s my parents’ fault. As a kid, I passed out water along race routes to my dad and his fellow runners, and did leg lifts alongside my mom and her leg warmer-clad compatriots in aerobics class. Exercise is just something I do, like brushing my teeth. OK, more like flossing—I don’t do it every day, but I aim for three or four times a week.

As a longtime gym member, I’ve started to recognize a pattern: each January, the place is packed. Parking spaces are scarce, and there are long waits for the treadmills. People in shiny, brand-new workout wear are everywhere. Then just as suddenly, around March, the gym empties out again and it’s just us regulars.

I’m not disparaging these would-be workout buffs for falling off the fitness wagon. I’m just noticing that if you approach exercise as “just something you do,” rather than an all-or-nothing oath, you’re more likely to find time for it regularly and stick with it.

Listen: there are plenty of days when it takes all the energy I can muster to drag myself to the gym. Especially if I’ve just spent 10 straight hours with a stubborn toddler who refused to nap so I could finish this column. Those days, I’ll set the recumbent bike to Level 2 and flip through People magazine as I pedal. A challenging workout? Hardly. But I give myself points for showing up. That’s what keeps me coming back to the gym in March, June, September, and even in January, when I can’t find a parking spot.

It’s the same with writing.

I’ve been a writer all my life, too. Writing is just something I do. I don’t broadcast it on bumper stickers or T-shirts. I don’t apologize for the time I spend writing. I don’t need to justify spending money on writing books or classes, or on a babysitter so I can write.

Now, I have been writing for publication for years. Sometimes I even get paid! I realize that if you’re just starting out and not earning much, if any, money for your work, it may be more difficult to convince yourself and others that writing is a worthwhile use of your time.

But it is. Like regular exercisers, writers who stick with it know that the rewards are great. Approach your writing as you would any other important undertaking in your life. Find time for it. Make time for it. Give yourself credit for showing up.

On the days when I write little more than a couple of e-mails and a blog entry, I don’t beat myself up. I’m still flexing my writing muscles, right? And I know that tomorrow I’ll sit down at my desk again and tackle that new assignment or tough revision. That’s because I’m a writer. And so are you. It’s just something we do.

LAST CALL O' THE WEEK: Still a few spots left in my 6-week online writing class, "Personal Essays that Get Published," which starts tomorrow. By the end of the class, you’ll have 2 ready-to-submit essays and a list of potential PAYING markets to send them to. Look at it this way: the class costs $250; I sold my last essay for $200 -- and that’s on the low end of the pay scale.

Former students have published their essays in the New York Times, Southern Living, Chicken Soup for the Soul, A Cup of Comfort, regional parenting mags, websites, and more. Registration closes tomorrow (1/12), so don’t wait!

Fit Mama

Whenever I spot a pregnant woman at the gym, I smile at her. I'm sure these people are like, "Why is this crazy lady grinning at me?" But it's because I worked out during both MY pregnancies, and I often felt like a spectacle with my huge, protruding belly in a place where most people go to lose theirs.

It's not like I was bench-pressing my body weight or training for a 10k when I was pregnant. It was more just to keep things loose (or tight, as the case may be) and honestly, another big benefit was stress-relief and mental health. Which I then proceeded to lose once the baby was born, but I digress... Anyway, you can read more about my quest to be a Fit Mama on TheBump.com:

Separation Anxiety, Take 2

Well, looky here. I decided to re-post an old entry because
a) I'm caught up in the copyediting project from hell
b) I'm having that deja-blog experience where every idea I have I've already blogged about, and
c) I'm in a bad mood because the gym daycare has kicked us out 2 days in a row because Riley won't stop crying & I can't get a damn workout.

I thought it would be interesting to see what the last kid was doing around this time. And look what I found:

Month 14: Separation Anxiety

Poor Miles. He’s downstairs right now shrieking his little lungs out, as he has been ever since the babysitter arrived. Whoever thinks it’s easy to work from home doesn’t have a toddler in the throes of separation anxiety. I hope this is just a phase. For now, I am a prisoner in my home office. If I go downstairs for a drink or a snack, he’ll catch sight of me and the whole ordeal will begin again. Thank God we have a bathroom on this floor or I’d be investing in Depends.

If I’d thought ahead, I would have brought my cell phone so I could text the sitter on her phone and tell her to block Miles’ line of sight while I sneak downstairs and out the door for my haircut appointment. See what my life has come to?

To be fair, though, Miles has had a bit of a rough week. Last week, I took him to the pool for the first time. Which he LOVED, by the way. He liked the baby pool OK, but when I brought him into the big pool he screamed with laughter and splashed like a lunatic. He didn’t even mind when I dunked him underwater.

Then, later that night, he started running a fever. By the next day, he was miserable. I took him to the doctor and it turned out he had an ear infection. His first. He bounced back pretty quickly, except for this new unbreakable attachment to Mommy. He even cries when I leave him with his dad. I feel bad, but hell, I need a break sometimes.

A REAL break, not “Hey, why don’t you bring Miles to my softball game and you can watch from the sidelines while I play. It’ll be fun.” Cut to Mom prying her son’s hands off of rusty fences, other people’s keys, cigarette butts, and someone’s grubby dog for a solid hour in the 90-degree heat. Is it my fault he spilled a beer on the playbook? Was it my idea to feed him a sticky cereal bar and then let him play in the dirt? (Well, yes to the former, no to the latter. Even though that’s how C. phrased it later: “Why’d you let him play in the dirt?” Same reason I “let” him dump out the dog bowl three times a day and play with cutlery and chew on the phone charger!)

So I haven’t been to the gym all week because I’m afraid to leave Miles at childcare. We’ve been doing our Stroller Strides class in the mall since it’s so damn hot out, and because Miles can keep me in his sight the whole time. But most of my exercise lately has come from carrying around my sticky-fingered 24-lb. appendage. Nothing like some quality Mommy & me time, right?

Health Tips from a Complete Non-Expert

As January winds down, I keep encountering people who have resolved to live healthier this year. Exercise more, eat better, slow down, the usual. To those folks I say, good for you! But do you have to take up ALL the parking spots at the gym? Some of us have boatloads of kids and diaper bags to carry, you know!

And also? I hope I’m not standing behind you in line at Panera when you special-order your lunch and ask for everything on the side. Just GET THE SALAD!! If you really want to save calories, you shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Sorry, went off on a tangent there. What I meant to say was, I would like to share some healthy living tips with you all. I am by no means a health expert or a model of fitness -- “Why run when you can sit on the recumbent bike and read People?” is my motto -- but I have been a vegetarian for a couple of decades and I’ve never been on “The Biggest Loser.” That qualifies me in some small way, right?

Just to be clear: I am not a medical professional, just a mom who forces her kids to eat vegetables and go to the gym with her. Got it?

Take the “ex” out of “exercise.” What do you think of when you hear the word “exercise”? Extreme workouts? Sweat, pain, discomfort? Then find something you don’t hate. I can ride a bike 10x longer than I can run, for example, simply because I enjoy it more. And I do yoga because it’s relaxing and I feel taller and looser afterwards. Whereas body pump (weightlifting) classes just make me sore. It doesn’t have to be uncomfortable to count as exercise.

Sneak it in. Forget Jessica Seinfeld’s cookbook. (Unless you’re craving this.) There are MUCH easier ways to sneak healthy stuff into your kids’ food. I mix carrots into any baby food my 11 m.o. turns up his nose at. (Like green beans.) I sprinkle wheat germ on my 3-y.o.’s yogurt and call it “crunchies.” I mix flaxseed into pancakes and muffins, and have been known to add pureed spinach to spaghetti sauce.

We try to buy unsweetened everything (yogurt, oatmeal), and add our own dab of sugar, honey, or jam to it. We also buy wholegrain everything—bread, pasta, tortillas, cereal. There’s no excuse to buy white bread. EVER. If you must, use Rachael Ray’s trick of making a sandwich with the wheat bread on the bottom and the white bread on top. Sneaky, huh?

Go veggie. Vegetarian fare has come a long way since tofu and soymilk. At any Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and ordinary neighborhood supermarket you can find a huge variety of frozen veggie entrees. My favorite product is Morningstar Farms Grillers Recipe Crumbles. Substitute them for ground beef in tacos, chili, spaghetti sauce, and countless other recipes. The soy chicken, on the other hand? You can skip. (Except the nuggets. They’re not bad.) And remember: anything meat can do, beans can do better.


Swap out the coffee. You know those too-much-coffee jitters? I’ve started switching to green tea after one cup of coffee in the morning. If you think it tastes like boiled vegetables, try Lipton Green Tea with orange, passionfruit, and jasmine with a squirt of honey. Yum! It gives me enough of a pick-me-up to get through the day but won’t keep me awake past “The Daily Show.”

Make it a habit. You wouldn’t skip brushing your teeth for a day, would you? Or washing your face? OK, well, definitely not for 2 days straight, right? Because you’re in the habit. And you’d start to feel gross. And your friends would avoid you.

Well, it’s the same with exercise and eating healthy. Start by just showing up at the gym, or going for a walk, or eating a fruit or vegetable with each meal. Before you know it you’ll be running 10k’s and downing shots of wheat grass. Or not.

Look, I can and sometimes do eat a bag of BBQ potato chips for dinner, but I pair them with a side of carrot sticks and ranch dressing. It’s all about balance, people. Good luck with those resolutions! Save me a Stairmaster, would you?

TIP O’ THE WEEK: I never could get into V8. These Apple & Eve fruit & veggie juice boxes are MUCH tastier. I steal them from my son all the time.

Real-Mom Resolutions

It’s that time of year, people. The time when if I were still working for a health web site I’d be crafting headlines like “New Year, New You” and “Be a 10 in 2010!” The time of year when regular gym-goers curse the well-intentioned hordes that inevitably descend on the Stairmasters. Until March, when the gym empties out again.

Well, this year I’ve decided to make REAL resolutions. You know, ones I actually WANT to achieve and maybe have a real shot at? Here goes:

Leave my children alone. What? You were expecting me to say spend more time with my kids? I already spend nearly every waking hour with them, people, and some of the sleeping ones! And I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that our offspring often behave better when Mom’s not breathing down their necks.

Case in point: Riley will be happily playing in the Exersaucer -- until he catches sight of me. Then it’s nonstop screaming and whining until I spring him loose. Similarly, Miles will amuse himself quite nicely with a book or toy in the next room, then when I walk in he’ll suddenly start acting up.

Eat more. That’s right, no carrot sticks and crash diets here. Don’t you remember, I have a built-in diet and exercise program? Besides, as an astute commenter once pointed out, mommy meltdowns are frequently caused by the all-coffee diet. You’re so busy attending to everyone else’s needs, you don’t take time to meet your own, such as food. That means protein, people, not cookies or the crusts of your kid’s PB&J!

Be nicer to my husband. This list just continues to shock and confuse, doesn’t it? I KNOW, me too!! But now that I’m (sometimes) getting a full night’s sleep and 3 meals a day, I have a new perspective. It’s easy to let civility slide when you’re in postpartum survival mode. It’s easy to snarl, “Get back to me when you’ve grown a PERSON inside your body!” when your hubby complains of a headache or a man cold.

But come on now, you’re both on the same team, right? And you must like SOMETHING about him if you made a baby with him. So I guess it won’t kill me to be a little more pleasant to C. now and then. (I just KNOW these words are going to come back to haunt me!!)

Stop sweating it. You know how sometimes someone can be inexplicably rude or mean to you? And you let it ruin your day and go over and over in your head why that person said or did that and what you did to provoke it and how you should’ve responded? Yeah, I’m going to stop doing that. It’s almost always about THEM, not YOU. Like that woman in yoga class who gave me the evil eye for putting my mat in “her” spot? Namaste, lady. You can have it.

Give myself a break. OK, this is where I get clichéd. But it’s true; I am SO much harder on myself than anyone else. Most moms I know are. So instead of focusing on the times I’ve lost my temper or fallen short of perfection, what I’m NOT doing, what I SHOULD be doing, and how I could be doing everything better, I’m going to try to give myself credit for what I AM doing. Like keeping 2 children clothed, fed, and alive day after day, for starters.

What do you think? Can I keep these up? Or will I be lunching on lattés and cursing the slow old lady in front of me at the grocery store by March? And what are YOUR New Year’s Resolutions? Do tell!

P.S. O’ THE WEEK: Another resolution, which wouldn’t fit neatly into this list, is to seek out new blogs to read regularly. No letting the media pick the “top mom blogs” for me. Here’s one, for instance, about a mom-to-be who quit her reporter job and is trying to simplify her life: Little House on the Southern Prairie. Fascinating!

How to Lose the Baby Weight

I’m going to let you all in on a big secret: this here’s my patented diet and exercise plan for losing those post-pregnancy pounds. With swimsuit season upon us, who wouldn’t want a fast, surefire way to fit back into that bikini? It works best if you have an older child and a newborn.

Breakfast: Wake up, carry baby downstairs. Put baby in bouncy seat. Go to pour yourself a bowl of cereal and realize your husband and older child have eaten all the cereal and put the box back on the shelf empty. Grab a cup of coffee instead.

Exercise interval: Pick up and put down the baby 3-4 times while you attempt to feed yourself and your older child while soothing the crying baby. Stop and nurse the baby 2-3 times, as well. (No, it’s not technically exercise, but it does burn calories.)

Morning snack: Eat the toast crusts left on your preschooler’s plate. Wash them down with a second cup of coffee. Add a splash of milk for some calcium.

Exercise interval: Get yourself, your preschooler, and the baby dressed. Your outfit requires running back upstairs for a pair of pants and downstairs to the basement to retrieve a clean nursing bra from the dryer. Dressing your older child involves chasing him around the house and pinning him down while you wrestle him into his clothes. Dressing the baby takes 3 attempts since the minute you get a clean onesie on him, he spits up again.

Lunch: Make your older child a sandwich with one arm while holding the fussy baby with the other. Cut off the crusts and eat those. Cut the peels off his apple slices and eat those. Realize you only have one yogurt left; give it to your child. Reheat your morning coffee and swig it down with a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter for protein.

Exercise interval: Squat to pick up sippy cups, pacifiers, and assorted cutlery that falls on the floor throughout the meal. Do some side bends as you reach down to unload the dishwasher, and throw in some calf raises as you put stuff away on the high shelves.

Afternoon snack: Eat a handful or two of your child’s animal crackers or pretzels. Gulp down some juice to stay hydrated for breastfeeding.

Exercise interval: Take both kids for a walk in the stroller, which is weighed down with enough diapers, wipes, snacks, and toys for the whole neighborhood. For maximum calorie burn, take the dog, too.

Dinner: Make your preschooler a pot of mac & cheese with a side of carrot sticks and ranch dip. Eat it yourself when he refuses to. Try to get him to eat some fish sticks. Eat those, too, when he refuses. Intend to make a real meal with a salad for yourself and your husband. Forget all about it when husband calls to say he’s working late. Collapse onto the couch with a pint of ice cream and a glass of wine.

Exercise interval: Run up and down the stairs 4-5 times to get your older child a glass of water, scare away monsters, and find beloved stuffed animal. Nurse baby 3-4 more times before bed.

There you have it, people -- the secret to my svelte post-baby physique. Of course, it does nothing for your dull skin, dark undereye circles, and dry hair. And it probably doesn’t provide enough nutrients for a squirrel, let alone a nursing mother. But, hey, I’m not a doctor! Proceed at your own risk. If this doesn’t work, some supermodels I know swear by the coffee and cigarettes diet.

LAUGH O’ THE WEEK: My almost-3 y.o. has started wearing “big boy underwear.” I asked him how it felt and he said, “Squeezy.”

(Not So) Fit Mama

I may have gotten a little smug about my ability to fit exercise into my busy schedule. As you might recall, I have always been a bit of a fitness freak, even if it meant doing ’80s-style prenatal workouts or making a spectacle of myself as the only pregnant person in my yoga class.

When Miles was born, I signed us up for Mommy & me yoga and then Stroller Strides. Also, my husband was getting home from work by 6 p.m. every night so I could go to the gym. And then … it all sort of fell apart. Which may explain how I found myself in my living room one afternoon hoisting large cans of garbanzo beans with my toddler attached to my leg. But first, let me back up.

Strapping the baby into the stroller for a jog around the park was all well and good when he was immobile. When we first started Stroller Strides, Miles was content to just take in the scenery and gaze at the other kids. Now, not so much. First, he’s one of the oldest now. Second, he can see the playground from the jogging path and would much rather be there than in the stroller. Third, he is bigger and stronger and more obstinate, which explains how he was able to tip himself and the entire stroller over one day. There I was, doing my step-ups on the bleachers and I look over to see my kid toppled over, legs flailing. He wasn’t hurt, just a little dazed. And probably pretty proud of himself, the little stinker. That was the end of class for us that day.

Next, I tried taking him to the gym with me. He doesn’t seem to mind the day care as long as there are other kids to distract him. However, he has the uncanny ability to time his dirty diaper for smack-dab in the middle of my workout. So the whole time I’m on the treadmill, I’m cringing, waiting for those inevitable words over the loud speaker: “Miles’ mom, you’re needed in childcare.” Sure enough, he’s set off a stink bomb. When he sees me, he immediately gets excited that we’re going home. So there goes my workout.

Finally, in desperation, I turned to Gilad. You know, the curly-haired, pumped-up “Bodies in Motion” guy? He’s got a show on FitTV. He and a group of other oiled-up, spandex-clad buff people lead a full-body workout on a picturesque bluff in Hawaii. Then there’s me in my toy-cluttered living room wearing an old T-shirt and using 2-lb. cans of beans for weights. Almost as glamorous, right?

Miles finds this fascinating for about 5 minutes. He even tries his own version of jumping jacks, though he can’t quite get his arms and legs to move at the same time. Then he gets bored and starts whining to watch “Finding Nemo.” When I ignore his pleas, he attaches himself to my leg. Sure, an extra 31 lbs. makes the leg-lifts more challenging, but I fear I will be lopsided since I can’t get him to switch legs. The cat stretch turns into a game of horsey. Guess who’s the horse?

I give up. Sure, I could try again during nap time, but that would cut into my blog-reading and cleaning-avoidance time. And you know what? I’m not even sure flat abs are worth it. I’d much rather take a nap and throw on an empire-waist top. Maybe I’ll drag myself back to yoga. At least that doesn’t require garbanzo beans.

LINK O’ THE WEEK: I’m not the only would-be fit mama. Sarcastic Mom’s determined to “Drop it with Dance,” come hell or high water.