Getting My Groove Back

Am I really that out of shape? My oldest bounded off the bus today, did that roadrunner dust cloud into the house, said “Meep Meep!” and begged me to play Wii Fit with her. Now, I used to do Wii Fit every single morning before sunrise. That was two years ago. I’m lucky to do it now once a month, but lately Lexi has been asking me more and more to play it with her when she gets home from school. And boy am I sore now, after working out with her for 45 minutes. (She, by the way, is raring for more, but I got out of it by saying she’s low on her screen time for the day — phew!) Maybe I need to get in shape.

I lost my groove when I stopped getting up so early, back when I switched jobs in 2012. I told myself back then that I would just switch to doing my Wii Fit workout in the afternoons or evenings, when I got home from work. Then when that didn’t happen, I told myself I did enough walking at my job so I was staying fit. Then when I realized that my walking pace wasn’t even remotely sufficient to help keep my heart rate up, to burn some good calories, or to keep me in shape, it just didn’t seem to be as important. Until this year, that is.

You see, I have two young children who are highly active, and I’m only 37. I should easily be able to keep up with them while they run and jump and dance and spin and run some more and everything else they get into. But I can’t, not always anyway. When we had played for twenty minutes and I was totally exhausted and needed to take a break — that’s when it hit me that I needed to get back in shape. If not for myself, for them.

So, as tired as I am when I get home from a long day at work, and as much as I want to tell Lexi that she can play Wii Fit by herself, I don’t do that. I don’t sit down, because I don’t want to HAVE TO sit down when I should be playing with my children. I’m not going to be an old man before my time. That’s why I got my groove on for 45 minutes, and why I’ve done it for the past five days in a row, and also why I’m not breathing as hard now as I was when I re-started this fitness movement.

Now, to stop eating so many Oreos…

Sam