Health as a choice

When I wake up in the morning I hit my alarm clocking, often waking up the SO in the process, shuffle my way to the bathroom and brush my teeth. I then walk slightly more sprightly into the spare room to pick out my clothes. I put them on. I may even hum a tiny bit as I put makeup on. Normally I do something with my hair to make it not stand on end. I Make coffee, get my breakfast/lunch ready and head out the door. These are things I do. I may wonder why, I may question getting five more minutes of sleep, but I go.

I do not give myself a choice in this matter. I cannot choose not to go to work unless I am willing to face the consequences: Jobless, destitute, moving back home to live with mom and dad (love you!). So, because I do not want to be jobless or destitute, I get up. I get ready. I go.

Unfortunately, there are things in my life that I make into choices when they're really not. Like eating right. Truffles do not constitute a healthy meal, or a meal at all, although they do have enough calories in them at times to justify using them as my supper. In the same vein of thought, vegetables and fruits alone are not good enough for me. I do not eat enough of a variety to make them as nutritious as they should be to sustain my body. I need to eat rice or bread *insert other carbohydrates here.* I also need protein in my diet as beans alone will not keep my muscles growing.

Then there's exercise. There are days I bitch and moan to no end about not wanting to go down to the lovely treadmill in my basement even to walk for ten minutes. I mean, it's ten minutes? I spend ten minutes today deciding what nail polish I wanted to wear and then I try to tell myself I don't have ten minutes to walk, in front of the TV, with a ice-cold glass of water at my disposal? I think I needs to get over myself. And when it's nice out and light out AND I feel like going outside, how can I not be grateful, yes, grateful for the opportunity to enjoy myself? I mean, I'm off work by 1 p.m. I can enjoy parts of the afternoon that in the fall and winter are actually tolerable, while other people work from darkness to darkness and see the slanted autumnal light seeping through work windows. I mean, yes I get up at the butt-crack of dawn, but still, Light? Warmth? Sun? Hello?

Yesterday was one of those days. Of warmth and sun, yes, but also of getting off my butt and walking/running on my treadmill, even though my butt was very against the notion of working. I mean, I've got races to train for! And after? After it was glorious and wonderful. And then, to top it off, I didn't have to make supper and we watched Harry Potter. Oh, and the cats decided to cuddle with me. Can you say perfect evening? I blame the workout. But yesterday, unlike tens of days I've recently let pass without working out, I didn't give myself an option. It was done, the workout, before it even started because it was written in stone that I would work out. And I did.

Being healthy, unfortunately, is a choice. It's a choice I mess up far too often, especially because in my heart of heart I know how happy I am when I am treating my body like it deserves. I don't have a personal trainer to make me do things. I have a SO who knows better than to "make" me do something. I have a brain that likes to be lazy because it's smart enough to have figured out how. Well, for now that brain has met it's matched. It's my determination, and the knowledge that I can do this. I've proved before I can do more than I ever thought myself capable of. I'll do it again.