I hear that us Librans tend to procrastinate. I don’t know whether that is also to blame for my love of plans, lists, resolutions, etc that never translate into action. When I thought up this plan, it was supposed to coincide with the start of a new month. Since I’ve missed that boat, the next best thing is to kick things off on a lovely (not sure if it is yet but it sure feels like) Spring Monday morning.
I’d love to blame my current proclivity towards doing nothing on my genes. Several members of my large extended family are famous for their laziness. Alas, I know that isn’t the case because when I was younger I played every sport that was available in my school: I ran 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m (albeit it just once because I came last but one – only because the girl who came last was about 4 years younger - was denied by my younger brother and thus never repeated the humiliating experience); I did field athletics including high jump, long jump, the javelin, shot put and discus events and I also played football, basketball, volleyball, netball and table tennis. In fact, I got to about 15 and my mother declared that I could only do one sport because she felt the sports were interfering with my academics. So no, I am not naturally lazy.
However, I did the solo events as a representative of my house in the inter-house sports for school and the team events for fun. I love sports – they are competitive and social. The gym is just a bore and feels more like a chore - ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you I have never been a fan of doing things that I feel mandated to do. Since I moved to England, I’ve only had solid spells playing Badminton, for 15 months, and football for 2 years. The rest of the time I have made repeated attempts to fall in love with the gym or at the very least make it a part of my routine and I have failed miserably!
This time though, I intend to appeal to the competitor in me on two levels. One, I am stupidly incapable of refusing a dare. Two, I hate to fail. I realised earlier in the year that I tend to set myself grand and completely unachievable goals because I'm trying to do things like everyone else. I set myself a small challenge of doing a low G.I diet for as long as I could. So far I'm on week 3 now and have already exceeded my expectations for how long I would last without rice and noodles so I'm giving myself another small challenge. I’m going to turn my three minutes of running to thirty minutes at a stretch by April 1st and keep track of my progress weekly.
On a related note, I now understand why healthy people look smug when they eat their healthy granola bars or while doing their daily 5 mile run. I’m typing this with a smug look on my face because I’m having a healthy breakfast – natural Greek yoghurt with one braeburn apple. I don’t know if this is the healthiest thing out there but it is way healthier than my regular breakfasts of the full English fry-up variety. I am doubly smug because I went for a run this morning. OK, so I did about six minutes of running in total and walked the rest of the time but hey, I’m out there and moving OK? I can shake my head at the thousands of couch potatoes who didn’t get any exercise this morning.
lol.If someone had told me when you were 15 that fast forward a decade and a bit later, you would be totally physically un-active I'd have eaten my hat! For all the sports that you were involved in, a spectator could be forgiven for wondering whether that head-butting, corner-kicking football player was male or female.
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