The Child - she's baaaaack!

My Inner Child has been making appearances lately.


It's important to note that when I speak of her, it is not a touchy-feely warm sentimental thing, like wanting to be carefree and innocent and go make sandcastles at the beach. Rather, she's that small, petulant and often quite vocal part of me that makes decisions as a spoiled child would - not very wisely - and who, when she gets mad, throws tantrums. (I think most of you are probably familiar with her, because her siblings probably reside in *you* as well!)

Yesterday morning when the alarm went off at 5, I lay there under the covers, debating about going to the gym. The evening before, the plan was to get in at least 3-3.5 miles on the treadmill, and perhaps a bit of upper body work with the weights. As I staggered into consciousness, hitting the snooze button two or three times, I realized I was already grumpy about the day and still really tired. I really, really, REALLY didn't want to go, and The Child was coming up with all *sorts* of reasons and excuses as to why I didn't have to. Eventually, I let her get her way - reset the alarm, burrowed back down under the covers and went to sleep.

When I got up the second time, I felt guilty that I had blown my chance to go work out, and immediately went into a negative spiral about anything and everything. Life, it sucked, and all I wanted to do was go back to bed for the rest of the day. Then I made the mistake of stepping on the scale and spent the next few minutes cursing at it was not a number I wanted to see, and everything just sort of viciously cycled upon itself as I got ready for work.

I spent the rest of the day being generally crabby and bummed out, and made some really poor food choices, all the while letting The Child justify why I could just go ahead and eat whatever, because, you know, I was having a crappy day so why not eat crap to make it better.

Oh yeah, right. It was one of those kinds of days.

Well, today, I was determined to have none of that. I got up (more or less) when the alarm went off, got the workout clothes on, told The Child to STFU, and ferried my butt to the gym amid whirling snowfall in the dark of the morning.

I muscled my way through a 3.6 mile sweatfest in about 50 minutes on the Dreadmill. I didn't have time to do weights, but by golly by gum, I got my sweat on and pushed my heartrate to a nice, consistent 150 BPM for the duration.

On my way to work, I picked up some good, healthy things to eat, including a nice chicken caeser salad for lunch (dressing on the side, of course.) I feel physically great and mentally strong, and very pleased that I ignored the petulant whining and did what needed to be done this morning.

And The Child, well, she was sent back to bed - for as long as I can possibly keep her there.