New Year’s Resolutions & the Fitness Challenge

At 5:30 a.m. with the temperature below freezing and frost glistening on the windows, I stood in my garage with my kickboxing gloves on wondering what in the Sam Hill I was doing.

If I weren’t the black widow of exercise, I would be inside some warm gym somewhere in some sort of organized class. But in the last year, my exercise partner and I have somehow managed to breeze through four different exercise venues. Breeze through as in they went out of business, moved away or ditched us. I’ve written about this before. You can read about it here and here.

So this frosty morning left me with no alternative if I was going to keep true to my New Year’s resolutions. At the top of my list—and apparently on the top of a lot of people’s lists—is the “let’s lose a gajillion pounds” resolution.

Of course, this is the same resolution that has topped my list year after year after year. I stuck it back up there any way.  I noticed, too, that another teacher blogger also resolved to lose weight this year except he has a Wii. Joel wrote about his plans to try and shed some pounds in 14 weeks with the goal of running his first 5k in April.

I don’t have a Wii (can’t afford one).

I don’t plan to run a 5k (running has never been my thing).

But I do plan to really, really, really try and lose some weight this year which is why I stood frozen in my garage before dawn.

Blame it on the brain freeze, but I had this brilliant idea. I thought to my chubby self, “Chubby Self, let’s issue Joel a challenge.  Let’s start a new blog. Let’s see how we do—he with his Wii and me with my sad little kickboxing bag and yoga. Let’s see if technology makes any difference.”

This could be fun.

Well, fun in a twisted sort of way.

Maybe if we have to blog about it, I thought, we might actually do it. I’ll even have the nurse at my school keep an “official” chart of my progress to keep me honest in my reporting.

Of course, that means I have to put away those gingersnaps now.

Let the games begin, and may both of us win!