Pickles & Dimes

Yesterday I discovered an angry bite on my calf. Naturally, I thought of Julie’s spider bite entry. Then this morning while jogging, I saw another fresh bite on my arm.

When I shared my valid concerns about either a) gaining super powers or b) dying via a poisonous spider, Jason attempted to cheer me up by relating a story involving his childhood neighbors, whose children kept waking up to bug bites, tons of bug bites, and guess what? Those weren’t bug bites, those were BAT BITES, aahhhhhhh.

Anyway, listen up. I am going to admit something I’ve never thought I would admit. Have you prepared yourselves?

I like getting up early to exercise.

God.

For full disclosure, there really isn’t an option to NOT get up, what with the cats being obnoxious and the resulting Guilt Trip if I don’t, but with our 90% humidity lately, working out in the mornings makes sense.

We jog at the high school track, where I keep up with Jason for exactly one lap, before my jog resembles “the next step above barely moving.” I take my asthma inhaler as soon as I wake up, but more often than not, it doesn’t really start working for me until my workout is nearly over, so my workouts are spent comparing how my breathing resembles getting my oxygen intake through various types of drinking straws. (Yesterday: regular drinking straw. Today: tiny mixing straw. Tomorrow: possibly one of those screwy, curlicue kids straws.)

The “less pop” mission is going well too. When I do indulge, even though I love the taste, I feel gross and bloated afterwards. My weight is about the same, maybe down a pound or two, although the past three days, my pants have all fit suspiciously looser and droopier.

To top it off, we’re nearly done with week 2 of the 100 pushups challenge, and as I was sitting in a work meeting this morning, I felt something hard on both of my arms.

I think it’s muscles.

Or more spider bites.

We’ve fallen off the exercising bandwagon; fallen off the hard, sweaty, shin splint-inducing wagon and into the soft, downy, warm mattressy comfort of our bed. But this week, Jason not only figured out how to wake me up when the alarm goes off, but keep me awake, and then force me up to exercise in a cloud of grumpiness and morning breath.

How did he manage this impossible feat? Well, he talks to me after the alarm goes off. Do you get that? He hits the snooze button – which is for the sole purpose of snoozing – and then talks to me. And expects answers.

Answers that awaken me and make me even more aware that Sunny’s 12 pounds are firmly positioned on my bladder. It’s remarkably effective: I’m awake, so I may as well get up and exercise.

Sneaky bastard.

Plus, once we’re up, he turns on every light in the house to ensure that I don’t fall back into REM activity while I’m standing (because I can do that). The bedroom light: flip. The closet light: flip. The aquarium light: flip. Flip, flip, flip, until our house resembles a baseball stadium at night.

While I can’t muster conversation unless I’ve been awake for 20 minutes, never mind complimentary conversation, let me now take this opportunity to thank my husband for dragging my grouchy, sloth-like body out of bed to exercise. Thanks, Jason. I’ll think of you the next time I’m shadowboxing.

We’ve been exercising to the Biggest Loser Cardio Max DVD while the cats lounge lazily on the couch, staring slit-eyed and bleary at us between catnaps. And Bob the trainer, the one who is all into touchy-feely exercising and yoga on the show, “warms us up” by immediately launching into jumping rope. That’s NOT warming up – warming up is stretching; stretching where you’re prone on the floor in a napping position, or at the very least, sitting. Jumping rope as a warm-up is like warming up for a run by sprinting a mile.

And the lunges. Good lord, the lunges. And the squats! Always with the squats. At one point I screamed silently, “I have ARMS too, you know!” But no, there were even more squats. (While holding weights!) Of course, it’s really quite the workout: you sweat, you feel your muscles vibrating in pain during the workout, and sometimes you have to sit down because it’s just too much to ask a mortal to hold the push-up position for 60 seconds.

But I bet it’s all worth it. And when it is, I’ll tell you all about it. Sometime early in the morning, with all the lights on.

This morning Jason and I got up to work out to our new Billy Blanks “Get Celebrity Fit!” Tae Bo DVD. (Billy, exuberantly: Are you a rock star? Me: No. Billy: Are you a celebrity?!? Me: NO. I’m going back to bed.)

Right away, Billy punished us (OK, me) for laughing at his tie-dyed shorts because unlike every other exercise video I’ve done, there was no warmup, like, AT ALL. Jason and I exchanged startled glances as we kicked and punched and flailed, and after one particularly wheezy interlude (again ME), Jason checked the timer to see how much time was left. My heart shriveled a little when I saw the display: 35 MINUTES.

Just like before, I had to sit down for a bit because my body malfunctioned while attempting its “breaking a sweat” function, which meant my face got so overheated I feared my punching and feinting was going to be replaced by puking and fainting. But then I finally broke a sweat and thought, “Hey, this is EASY!” Ridiculous.

Billy got bonus points for first demonstrating the moves in slow motion, so even non-coordinated people such as myself understood them, and for being totally honest when he said, “Just one more set.” That’s very important to me – seriously. DO NOT LIE TO ME about reps or how many more seconds of agony I need to endure.

I know there’s some quote out there about how no one ever works out and thinks afterwards, “I really regret working out,” but conversely, I never wake up early to work out and think, “Boy, I got too much sleep; I should’ve woken up earlier.”

Regardless, OPERATION: 2008 FITNESS continues unabated.

Like every other person on the planet, Jason and I pledged to eat better this year. For both of us, that means smaller portions; for me, it also means less Mt. Dew and keeping a food journal.

I told Jason I wasn’t going to keep the food journal for very long, just long enough to get an idea of what I’m eating so I can make changes. He smirked and made The Face, you know, the face that says, “She’s giving up already.”

I’m not giving up. I just want the constant, CNN-style food thought ticker to permanently disappear from my head.

Counting calories blows. It is all-consuming. My thought process is ALL FOOD, ALL THE TIME. Everything has calories. EV-ER-Y-THING. That teeny cup of applesauce? 110 calories. That packet of sugar I put on my oatmeal? 15 calories. My morning vitamin? 20 calories. (Jason: “If you just swallow the normal vitamins like a regular person instead of getting the chocolate chewable ones, it’d be 0 calories.” Me: “NEVER.”)

I told myself that I wasn’t going to cut out certain types of food entirely; I was just going to consumer fewer amounts of them at lesser intervals.

But I can’t help but be discouraged when I see the caloric content of my favorite foods. For now, I’m taking baby steps. Refusing to walk by the receptionist’s candy dish; having a smaller portion of dinner so I can reward myself with a mini Mt. Dew (the day I give that up for good is the day I am dead); drinking glass after glass of boring, tasteless, boring, crappy water. I parcel out snacks in doable increments: If I make it until 2:00, I can have a snack…

I know it will get easier; that after a few weeks, eating better will become a habit; things will become less of a temptation and getting up early to work out will possibly become, god help me, enjoyable.

I can do it. I know it.

(By the way, that deep breath I just took? 50 calories.)