...and three more...and two more...

The title of my blog refers to the mantra chanted by my mother's Jane Fonda workout videos when I was younger. People say that the way diet/exercise are treated in your family growing up informs your lifetime relationship with food and I think my parents did pretty well. I'm not overly obsessed, I don't think, and I'm not unhealthy. We ate well in my house, not much restaurant food, always sitting at the dining room table for dinner. I'm not sure what it takes to be someone who is effortlessly thin. Probably bags of marshmallows are out, but I'm not much of a binger so that doesn't help me.

Not that any of you care much, but, along with the rest of the country, I've gained on the order of 5-7 lbs. in the past few weeks. It's a combination of factors, including: stress associated with turning in my thesis, Thanksgiving, and a wonky knee that is maybe tendonitis (i.e., jumper's knee). I've been enjoying cookies, ice cream, chocolate, etc. as surrogates for rest/relaxation. Also, I've been actually physically resting as a proxy for mental relaxation. The result is that I'm now stressed about weight gain, in addition to my job and the economy.

Fortunately and unfortunately, I already go to the gym kind of a lot. The result of that is that I need to make some other change, such as diet (ew, worst possible change), or adding cardio (ew, running...I'm re-thinking the worst possible change). I decided to try stepping up my swimming game by trying to do 1-minute laps, in order to make swimming more rigorous. My progress so far involves the fact that it rained on the day I had decided to swim and no one wanted to walk to the CRC...so I didn't go. Sigh. This is an eternal battle. I wish it weren't.