Workin' it out

Happy New Year, friends in fetus-making!  

We got 2013 off to a pretty chill start, hosting two other couples for dinner at our place and ringing in the new year with good wine and non-shouted conversation.  I couldn't be happier to say goodbye to the days of paying ridiculous cover charges to overcrowded bars, skittering around icy streets in heels while attempting to flag down the only cab that's passed by in the last half hour.  "$30 cover?  Are you freaking kidding me?  Oh, you mean I get a crappy noisemaker that'll break in ten minutes, plus the joy of being crushed against a bar while waiting forever for a vodka and soda?  Well, why didn't you say so!  Let me in!"  

We're becoming such oldsters.

As my post title suggests, I've also started a new workout regimen.  Given my 8 months of fitness stagnation in 2012, I've decided to ease back into things with some at-home DVD workouts. This will allow me to keep things pretty light while we go through our January IVF cycle, but will also give me a good enough fitness base to ramp it up into some outdoor running this spring if I'm still not pregnant.  I actually have to remind myself not to push too hard, since I tend to have an over-inflated sense of how fit I actually am.  I remember back to when I used to run all the time (5k every day, 10k on the weekends for fun!) and just can't believe I'm not that person anymore.  

But that person also had a very all-or-nothing approach to living healthfully.  Being "on" meant working out every day and following a regimented eating program that included keeping a food diary, weighing and measuring everything I ate, budgeting my 1500 to 1700 calories per day and never going over except on designated cheat days.  Being "off" meant that eating something forbidden or skipping a workout ruined my whole fitness regimen, so I should just not work out at all and eat as much crap as I wanted.  While I never struggled with an actual eating disorder, I definitely had an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise that emphasized perfection and left no room for flexibility or listening to my body's cues.  I've worked a lot on this but I can still fall back into these old habits pretty easily, and the stress of 2012 was definitely a big trigger for me.  I was "off" pretty much all year, and since I wasn't eating terribly well I figured there was no point in working out.  Yep, it's that dumb.

Luckily, it turns out that babymaking is the perfect motivation to pull my head out of my ass!  During an IVF cycle you're supposed to do light exercise and eat healthy (but not diet), which means it's totally counter-productive for me to become fixated on calorie counting or crunching my way to 6-pack abs (yeah, like that's ever happened).   Case in point: yesterday I ate well, worked out, and after dinner ate a leftover cupcake from New Year's Eve.  Today, instead of viewing myself as a complete failure and giving up, I ate well and worked out again.  Revolutionary!!  I mean, I know this is basic logic to a lot of people, but for me it's a pretty big deal.

Anyway, this post became a lot more personal than I originally intended it to be.  It's actually probably good for me to get it out there, since the practice of writing about my all-or-nothing attitude just helps reinforce how ridiculous it is.  And now I'm accountable if I start slipping back into it again.  Although with any luck, the next time I'll need to deal with this issue is when I have 20 to 30 pounds of baby weight to lose!