I arrived at the gym just after 6:00am on Monday which meant I had missed the spinning class I wanted to go to. (excuse #1).  I thought about just going across the street to the Tim Horton’s because I was still sleepy and hadn’t even had a coffee yet (excuse #2). I remembered that I had committed to the blogosphere that I was not going to make excuses and committed to myself to take better care of my health so I went inside.  I did ten minutes on the elliptical because “I should take it easy after being away from the gym for a few weeks” (excuse #3) I then completed the weight circuit and felt pretty good because I did manage to increase the weight I had been comfortable with previously. I was even home before 7am which is when my husband leaves for work.

I was hungry by 7:30am and my fridge was looking very scarce (I avoided the grocery store this weekend because of Father’s day – Excuse #4).  I finally landed on making myself a strawberry oatmeal smoothie. I then had to figure out what I was going to take to work for lunch and I really couldn’t find anything in the fridge (see excuse #4). I saw a box of egg whites in the fridge and had the brilliant idea of making myself a spinach omelet for lunch, but I had to leave the house in 15 minutes there was no way I  had time to make an omelet . I guess I was just going to have to go to the food court (excuse#5) I again thought of my commitment to the blogosphere and made the omelet. It took 5 minutes!

Around noon I decided to head down to the gym that is just two blocks from my office and try out their midday Zumba class (more on that in a separate post) I had my gym clothes with me but there was no way I could get to the gym, do the class, get cleaned up and make it back to work plus I’d be all sweaty! Yuck! (excuse #6) I went anyway and so glad that I did. The class was great and yes I was rushing back and yes I was sweaty but guess what? I lived.

I did run into a bit of a “hic-up” on the way back. I was hot and sweaty and got a craving for a frozen coffee,  I have always loved Slushies and now that I can get a frozen blended coffee I’m in heaven. Starbucks can make a low fat no sugar added blended coffee so its basically a frozen coffee with skim milk. I  had also recently found a Starbucks gift card but the Starbucks would take me about two minutes out of my way when there was a perfectly good Timothy’s right by my work ( excuse #7) I opted for the Timothy’s and it turns out that their blended coffee is premixed with the sweetener.  I couldn’t possibly say I didn’t want it. What if I hurt the cashier’s feelings ( excuse #8). I drank my frozen drink and then looked up the nutritional info, turns out that I had just taken in 230 calories (not earth shattering) and 29 grams of sugar! Aughhhh.

I made it through dinner with some soup and chicken and as soon as dinner was done the kids wanted to go bike riding. They are still not “bike riding alone” age specially because my 3 year old likes to follow behind in her tricycle. So when the kids wasn’t to go bike riding it means I go for a brisk walk trying to keep my daughter from trampling over the neighbourhood gardens and dogs with her tricycle. It was 7:30pm, we had just finished dinner, the dishwasher hadto be unloaded and reloaded, and the kitchen need to be cleaned I wasn’t about to go out now. (excuse #9) I sucked it up and off we went, as we were going out the door I was already saying “Ok. Ten minutes, that’s it. Everyone understand? Ten minutes.”  An hour later we were walking back through our front door, we had gone around the block, up and down the trail by our house and even played a game of “I’m gonna catch you” at the park.

I felt great. I had walked off my dinner, spent some time with the kids and gotten more exercise than I would have ever imagined. The downside? With all those endorphins running through my body I just couldn’t get to sleep.  It was way past midnight before I even went to bed.  There was no way I was going to make it to the gym for 6:00am the next day. (excuse #10)