On Fitness

A theory I have held for a while now is that there is an inverse correlation between exercise and intellectual activity.  It makes sense: if you exercise a certain percent of your day, that is time when you are most assuredly not reading. I have experienced this first hand.  (No, I don't want to hear about Audiobooks.  I've tried, and the experience is still very different from reading--more different from reading, in fact, than reading paper books is from electronic books.  But that doesn't mean I'm calling people who read Audiobooks un-intellectual.) In the past, I have used this theory as a reason not to exercise.  But now, I find myself with almost a kind of exercise-regimen (which scares me a little), and I really believe my theory is still upheld.

I used to wonder how it was even possible to fit exercise into the day.  But, well, now I find myself with a lot of free time, courtesy of my former department head in my former department.  However, the fitness bug started a bit further back when, as a result of some health issues (not mine), we started to make some changes in our lifestyle.  Not that I had never tried.  It's just that things never stuck.  So starting back, well, in 2016 probably, my husband (I don't like the D.H. moniker, but I don't like to name names, so I'll be searching for a non-cheeseball way to refer to him) and I started participating in a workplace wellness program.  It started with water aerobics, but eventually we discovered a weightlifting class that we both enjoyed.  For the next year and a half, we went to 45-minute to an hour exercise classes 2-4 times a week.  This varied with our daughters' school activity schedules and son's work- and school schedule (since the classes were after 5, and he babysat).  When in conflict, I would opt out of attending, or sometimes we would alternate.  This continued to shift from semester to semester, until in the Spring semester 2018, we were both trying to attend weightlifting twice a week. This stopped with my termination in May 2018, since I am no longer eligible, but my husband does still attend.

So how did this impact my intellectual activity?  Well, first, it took up time.  I had to schedule it in.  I had to account for changing into workout clothes, bathing when I got home, and delaying supper plans (or bringing home take-out).  After a day of work, the intense 45-60 minutes left me pretty exhausted and unfit for all but the lightest of reading, and that's until I fell asleep and the Kindle fell off my lap.  However, I was certainly energized overall; I felt stronger (if sore as hell).  I did fret about health-related things for my husband and myself like the possibilities of blood clots and heart rate things (which were not helped by the fact that the doctor I was seeing is like Professor Sybill Trelawney, predicting my early grave in not so many words because of somewhat elevated blood pressure and cholesterol (but I thought exercise helped those things? so give them a chance to help, already!)  So scheduling, fretting, etc. meant less time for anything.  And prioritizing health was clearly not prioritizing grading, so tech writing papers got back to students late (not even touching on the soul-sucking misery that is grading tech writing semesters in a row without relief) which students hate with a fiery passion because they can't assess their GPA accurately enough to drop the class before they get a B.  I'm not even kidding.  But I digress....  And to be fair, I was procrastinating grading in favor of scholarly things, too.  So I have discovered that exercise really does impact intellectual activity, and I'm afraid the negatives (time-consuming-ness) may outweigh the positive impact (energizing overall, or at the right time of day) on productivity.  Meanwhile, just teaching and exercising a bit, I lost about 10 lbs. after quitting my desk job.  I also gained some noticeable (to me) muscle tone from weightlifting, which I have struggled to keep to some extent.

Over the summer, I tried to do something to avoid gaining 5 or 10 lbs. back.  I was mostly successful, meaning that I was on the lower end of the possible weight gain spectrum.  I enjoy yoga, so I experimented with some Gaiam videos through iTunes, and found a cardio video that I liked that incorporated some yoga, and a really tricky, challenging intermediate yoga that I like, but which is still a bit beyond my skill.  Emboldened by that small success, I subscribed to Gaia, using the Apple TV to watch the videos.  The kids knew to vacate the room for a while each morning (most mornings?) to let me do the yoga.  It was good, but not enough, summer being what it is (unstructured, even for us).  We also tried to do things like bowl using the Kids Bowl Free program.  And then school started, and my son (21) and I decided to bite the proverbial bullet and take a walk each morning before the day becomes too hot to live.  So this is my schedule, though this is usually punctuated by obsessive checking of the university employment page and obsessive checking of email for the inevitable rejection and sprinkled liberally with anxiety, questioning, self-doubt, and Pokémon Go:

7:30 - 7:40 A.M. - leave to bring kids to school and husband to work
8:20 A.M. - return home and eat a minimal but necessary breakfast
8:30 - 9 A.M. - depart on foot for nearby park; walk 2-3 laps, depending
9 - 9:30 A.M. - return home and drink lots of water, recover for a bit
9:45 - 10 A.M. - select and do a Gaia yoga video (usually featuring Clara Roberts-Oss)
10:30 - 11 A.M. - bathe and dress (coffee optional)
11:30 A.M. - start thinking about FOOD
12 - 1:30 P.M. - make or procure food
1 - 2 P.M. - run any necessary errands, usually involving food; coffee at this point becomes NOT OPTIONAL
2 - 3 P.M. - return home with groceries &c., procure or fix coffee, watch t.v. or toodle around on the internet (repeat obsessive checking of employment page, email, and Facebook)
3:45 P.M. - leave to pick up girls from school
4:20 P.M. - return home with at least one daughter
4:30 P.M. - (some days) - return to pick up second daughter from extracurricular activity
4:45 P.M. - (except on the above-noted days) pick up husband from work

That will do.  It doesn't actually account for dropping the Archivist (I'll try that one on for size instead of "my husband") off at weightlifting, but that has just started this week.

The notable thing is that everything up to and including lunch is motivated in some way by exercise.  And woo--I've lost 5 lbs.  I have literally lost 5 lbs. since the girls started school.  That's only 3 weeks.  That's a record for me if we don't count the pounds lost by actually giving birth.  But several hours of every day are spent exercising, recovering from exercise, and feeding my body the calories necessary to continue functioning after exercise--not to mention the caffeine.  And though it varies by day, I'm not really in the state to do much in the way of intellectual activity most days.  My brain is kind of mushy.  Vitamins help.  Food helps.  (Also see above mention of caffeine.)  So even if I could return to my night-owl ways and work on intellectual pursuits at night (which getting up early for work broke me of years ago), I am, once again, exhausted.

The level of exhaustion depends on how much "extra" yoga I do after walking.  The problem is, walking alone doesn't feel like working out.  It feels like so much pounding.  My muscles don't have that "feeling good" feeling that they have after other kinds of exercise.  So... I add yoga.  Sometimes it's only a 10 minute "Quick Stretch" video.  Other times, depending on my body or how "in my head" I am, I opt for a 15 minute or even longer video--sometimes as high as 42 minutes in addition to walking.  And those walks have already increased from 2 laps to 2-3 (depending) and now 3 by default.  It's possible that they will increase to 4 laps soon.  Which is great, right?  Endurance! Woo!  But that means more calories burned (theoretically, although my same number of laps is burning fewer calories: endurance. woo.) which means more thinking about food which also means more tired while the body adjusts... And so on.  Not to mention the extra minutes it takes to walk that extra lap.  And why not just sub out yoga for walking? Well, because I'm the only one who does the yoga, and I have chosen walking as much for my son ("taco guy"? no, he quit that job; "coffee guy"? not yet; "photo guy"? sounds creepy....  It's a work in progress.) as myself, and because the yoga (unless it's a really long, intense yoga) doesn't actually burn the same calories as the walk, or feel the same.

In the meantime, I'm probably getting to that "addicted to endorphins" stage, so if I stop the exercise, I will actually feel bad.  Exercise. Woo.

Which is why I feel like I need a system.  Or--I have a system.  I need to figure out where, when, and how to add intellectual activity.  Maybe I should skip errands.  But then the evening doesn't run as smoothly for the family because we still need to buy the things that we need to buy to make supper and the next day's breakfast and lunch happen.  Blogging might help there, too.  In fact, we're in that "t.v. watching" window right now--and here I am, writing.  And in fact, I've cheated a bit.... because I am writing today (blog day 1) in anticipation of publishing tomorrow (blog day 2)--writing begets writing, apparently.  Maybe I'll use tomorrow to find a picture or two.  Maybe I'll find a way to use those endorphins and put my theory on exercise vs. intellectual activity to rest once and for all.

Until then... the theory stands.