Unemployment is good for working out

I love games. I pretty frequently lose them (unless I'm on team "Winning!" for Taboo . . . hee hee!), but I enjoy how games mentally challenge me.

I also love, love, love my brother even though we are often competitive with each other. Who's mom's favorite? Which one of us is smarter, funnier, or most beloved? We are mostly kidding about these things (but not entirely). So, when he and I came up with a makeshift and ridiculously funny game, we both went all in.

I'm not sure how this came about, but when he got his iPhone he and I were showing each other tricks, tips, and apps. I showed him how to set up folders and move apps on the screens, he showed me how to set up my navigator. I told him to get Words with Friends, and he told me to get Dictionary.com. "Why?!" I said. He said, "Well, this might sound stupid, but I like getting the word of the day. Then, even though I'm a jock and a bartender, I try to use it in a sentence three times. I don't care if people think it's weird. I do what I want."

I was pretty impressed with that so I downloaded it immediately. And somehow over the next week, what evolved was a game of our own making. We started texting each other with sentences using the word of the day. And somehow this turned into, a sentence using the word of the day making fun of something or someone in our family. This, in turn, evolved into whichever one of us got the best sentence FIRST using the word of the day gets the "point." Now, we don't (to my knowledge) ever count points across weeks or months. But whoever gets the point gets the pride of that . . . until the next day :)

The effect of this is that I get to text my brother nearly every day. a couple of weeks ago the word was "excogitate." I managed to use it in a sentence referencing another running inside joke we have going right now. So, we were both laughing at my text. Then he asked how I was. And we started talking about working out - a common theme in our conversations. He said, "Unemployment is good for working out."

He should know. He played this game for nearly two years. And I saw how hard unemployment was on him. It was a similar situation in that his job was eliminated through no fault of his. He combated the difficult emotions of joblessness through humor. He would quote the movie "Knocked up" and say, "Yeaaaahhhh. I'm uh . . . no work today!" He laughed at the lifestyle of wearing sweats every day. But I know he was also anxious, antsy, and upset about the situation. So, he made jokes. He became sarcastic, and he poured even more of himself into working out. And that's saying a lot since he had been running, lifting, and practicing Jiu-Jitsu before he was let go. He had not one, but two low-cost gym memberships during that time. And he used them both.

So, when he said, "Unemployment is good for working out." I thought about it for a minute and then knew, that of all people, he would best understand when I said," And vice versa. It helps me not get crazy or depressed."

It will not be a shocker to any of you that while I don't exactly look forward to my dates with the treadmill, I have come to appreciate my time being active. Where it used to be a chore and necessity, I now really, really need that time. It is time out of the house. It is time away from screen. It is time away from my fears that I will end up living under someone else's roof.

So, it turns out, that I am not a sloth, regardless of what my physique might suggest.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to another friend who was checking on me and I said to him, about not responding right away, "Sorry, you caught me at the end of my run." He asked if it was a good one. As it happened it wasn't, but what I said was, "There are no good runs. Only running assignments I accomplish and those I don't." This is still true almost every day. I don't enjoy how my body feels when I'm running. Pardon me while I sound like an old lady - my feet hurt, my back hurts, my knee hurts, and it takes a lot more focus than someone like me with some ADD tendency often has to get my breathing in rhythm. I often have to close my eyes and try to go inward to somewhere that has nothing to do with the people on the treadmills next to me, the TV screen above me, the (not really so awful) pain, and the voice inside my head saying, "Stop!"

But the other thing that is true is that I'm grateful for it. Where I used to be assigned 90 - 120 minutes of cardio a week and 3 hours of high interval resistance, I'm now still doing the resistance but adding to the cardio . . . on purpose. Yesterday I swam two miles and ran two miles. The day before I lifted and then swam two miles. On a treadmill I'm not second guessing a cover letter. On a treadmill I'm not wondering about an interview. On a treadmill I'm far too busy to add and re-add a budget. I can fight for something tangible on a treadmill.

I wish I had understood this before I lost my job. The truth is, this is, in very real ways, the cure for many of my very real health issues. Working out can only positively impact PCOSor anyone working against insulin by stabilizing their health through regular exercise, and particularly a good blend of cardio and resistance, interval and/or anaerobic training.  Asthmatics who exercise stand to reduce stress (which can trigger respiratory issues), increase lung function, and sleep better. Whatever issues with focus I have are measurably improved by burning some energy off, and even my migraine issues are improved by exercising. While running may not be the very best thing to do for my knees (swimming IS but is not the very best thing I could do for my hair. Yes, that's right, I am a real girl somewhere underneath all of my facade and I have this one vanity) I figure this: my knees are wrecked enough that they're not going to last the rest of my lifetime. But they're working now so I should take advantage of it (because I can still remember palpably how frustrated I was when confined to an arm bike for weeks and weeks while my knees couldn't bear weight).

"But Christie, you were getting 5 hours of exercise a week before." Yes. Yes I was. But it wasn't enough. I've written about this before. Everyone else in the world gets weight control results from 3-5 hours of exercise a week. I don't. That's just the way it goes. So, if my weight goals weren't responsive to 5 hours a week, it stands to reason that my other health goals weren't being completely serviced by 5 hours a week. Also, let's be honest - 5 hours a week was the goal but between being on the road or on a plane or in a hotel it was often closer to 3 or 4 hours a week. And as I said recently to my trainer, "The thing is, before, if my exercise was on, my food wasn't. Or vice-versa. It was never both being right at the same time." I take responsibility for that. I also think, in analyzing it, I wasn't ever going to be able to fully take on changing that if half my life was spent in transit, without any schedule that resembles normal human life, and unable on many occasions to plan or cook my meals.

So, I'm aimed at 5-6 hours of cardio each week now, in addition to my other "assignments." as much as possible, I try to keep it low impact cardio, and I'm really not thinking of it being "extra" cardio right now. To me it seems more like having missed school and needing to make up for it. As a child, I  was hospitalized for asthma related complications and illnesses at least 2 times a year. My shortest hospitalization was 4 days. My longest was 4 weeks. There was always some homework I could do once I had gotten a little better and wasn't fighting for my life (literal, not exaggeration. I know how to handle it, but fighting for a breath and having your oxygen levels drop despite medication is scary) but I also often had a busy schedule of blood tests, chest X-rays, respiratory therapy, and treatments. So, then, I'd go back to school and have a lot of homework to make up. I feel like that now - I'm making up homework from when I was sick. The difference is I wasn't consumed with chest x-rays or IVs, but with work before now. I did miss hours, and hours of agreed upon "homework" though.

So, when someone said to my 2 miles of running and 2 miles of swimming last night, "Gawwwd. that sounds awful," I was able to say, "I know. But it helps me not freak out right now so it's a good thing. It's hard to get too crazy when I'm this tired."

As I peer through the window of hopeful employment this month I find myself often thinking about the logistics of different positions and quickly on the heels of that thinking, "would I still be able to count on myself to get my workouts in?" I may not, when I go back to work, keep my gym time as high as 9-10 hours a week, but I'd like for it to be higher than the minimum required 5 hours. I sleep better, I like myself better, and the treadmill and I, if no yet friends, are now showing grudging respect for one another. That would have to be considered important even if I was spending 40 hours a week working instead of 30 hours a week job hunting and interviewing.