I used to love the gameshow Double Dare on TV. The show was part trivia questions, part obstacle course. If you could not answer a question or thought the other team couldn't you dare them to do it, and then they could dare you back until you got to the point where you had no choice but to compete by taking on something physical rather than mental. The obstacles came in the form of physical challenges which usually involved someone running around or squatting awkwardly, while someone else spent their time filing a cup with a line that was attached to the squatter with some kind of liquid. I hated the physical challenges, they made me cringe. I was always the person yelling at my tv screen, telling the contestants to answer the question so they wouldn't be as tortured as I imagined I would be with that stupid challenge. I knew that if it were me and we had a physical challenge we would lose but, if it was all flexing my brain muscles I could probably beat the other team. The physical challenges required way too much movement and hand-eye coordination to appeal to me.
This is how it has always been with moving. Unless I was dancing, the less I moved the better. To me, sweating was nasty and people who sweat, stank...ironic really considering that I loved to work up a sweat from dancing, in this situation sweating meant I was doing it well. Regardless all of my former reasons meant I avoided physical activity to some extent. Of course that didn't stop me from being on the basketball team in the eighth grade (I had really cute coaches) or the band in high school (I joined as a favor to friend), it's just that aside from that crazy basketball thing which I was terrible at (theres just no getting away from the whole hand-eye thing), the marching band was a lot of slow walking and taking really deep breaths to I could play my fife. Unless it was really hot, there was no sweating involved in that and I was so terrible at the basketball I was barely called on to play anyway. No, sweating, grunting, panting, all of these things were the enemy to my state.
So here I am decades later and getting up is still my biggest challenge and so Weight Watchers wants to kill me by setting up their 6 Week Active Living challenge. I say they want to kill me of course because it's like the people there psychically know this is going to be the hardest thing for me and so they set this up just to torture me. For 6 weeks you can track your activities online and maybe win some prizes. Of course I joined it. I need to start getting up and maybe this is a good way to challenge myself. I'm getting over my sweat issue. No really, despite what I said earlier about sweating being my own personal terrorism threat, I'm growing quite fond of working one up. At the gym if I don't sweat after my elliptical workout I get kinda bummed. I purchased a heart rate monitor that will tell you how many calories you've burned. I push myself to see that heart rate number go up, to know my heart is pumping. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to blow a heart valve or anything but I am slowly beginning to see how the whole working out thing can be appealing. It does alter your mood, your self-esteem, its benefits feel almost instant. (Of course so does the pain, but lets not focus on the negative, right?)
So now I consider myself physically challenged. I'm going to start wearing my pedometer again, start working out consistently, keep tracking my points and start tracking my activity. I might win one of their prizes and even if I don't the weight loss all that exercising will turn into makes me a winner in the end. Its a win/win the more I lose! Here's to winning by losing for the next 6 weeks:)
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