Experimentation

I am obviously a hypocrite. In my last post, I bragged about all the good that I've been doing in my nutrition and exercise lifestyle changes and touted our weekly guidelines that have been so helpful to us.

Whoops.

Maybe I'm being a little too hard on myself. I mean, I don't actually think I'm a hypocrite. That just seemed like a good opening and a little self-punishment. (Negative talk though, folks, is not a good thing. I need to stop doing that. But that's going to take some time. A LOT of time.)

What happened this past week was I got sick, my wife got sick, and our two kids got sick. Couple that with my wife still trying to recover from a concussion she sustained two weeks ago, and you have basically the makings of a "I don't care what's for supper" kind of week.

To be completely honest, we didn't have a meal plan, either. So it would've been a scramble every night to come up with something for supper, anyway. I like to think we would have come up with healthier meals had we been feeling normal, but we'll never know for sure.

Anyway, all this being sick, not eating right, not exercising and just basically feeling out of whack put me in a bit of a melancholy, introspective type of mood as I am wont to do when I am in that state. And I came to the conclusion that I have NO time for anything fun. None. Sure, I exercise, but I usually do it on my lunch break and that's usually heading to the YMCA to go swimming. An hour isn't a lot of time to get to the Y, change into the suit, do 30+ minutes of laps, shower, get dressed and head back to work. (Maybe for some it would be enough time but, as my wife frequently -- and accurately -- points out, I am a sloooooooowwwwww poooooookkkkkkeeee).

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the swimming. It's just really hard to use the exercise to de-stress when you stress about the time you're away doing said exercise. But it really is the best time of day for me to do it. I don't have to worry about helping get the kids to daycare, I don't have to be home helping with supper and getting the kids from daycare (the girls are 2 and 3 years old). Once they're a little older and in school, I don't think it will be as much of an issue. But for now, it takes both me and my wife to get them out the door and us to work on time. And I have a commute to work, so I'm gone a little longer already.

Where was I? Oh, right! The conclusion to the introspection.

After talking things out with my genius, all-knowing, "wicked smahht" (Bostonian accent) wife, we concluded something had to give. Between work, exercise, eating right, playing with the kids, chores and cleaning up around the house and TV time at night, something had to go.

Enter "The Experiment".

I have been a big TV viewer for a LONG time. It's always been a big thing in my house. Growing up, we knew TV. It's sad, and it's probably contributed to where I am today on the activity level and my weight issues. But it's something that needed to be cut back, if not cut out completely.

Now, I have my fears about this one. There are many. For one, I am a BIG sports fiend. Football, baseball, wrestling (REAL wrestling, not that WWE stuff), soccer, hockey, NASCAR, volleyball, swimming, tennis....the list goes on and on. I LIVE to watch sports on TV. How am I going to live without all those sports? Well, there is the Internet with all it's sports sites and stuff. I could read accounts on them. I could even catch a few highlights of the truly spectacular plays. Ok. That could be all right for now.

Another fear is pop culture/societal pressure. I'm really an introvert that doesn't know how to relate to people very well. I don't know how to talk with them. I've always fallen back on stuff TV has to offer for that. If I cut out TV, will I not be able to talk to anyone at all, even my family? I'm afraid I'll become the boring, uninteresting snob who doesn't seem to have a life.

I finally figured that maybe there's a better way to look at this. I have a reading list a mile long that keeps getting longer that I never seem to have any time for. That would be a good time to catch up on some of that.

I've wanted to learn to play the piano and guitar. I have both instruments here, gathering dust, just waiting for me to pick them up and start learning.

I've wanted to try my hand at calligraphy. I have 2 model ships my wife bought for me for Valentine's Day that I haven't even started yet. I want to blog more (maybe that way I'll keep the post sizes a bit smaller than this novel appears to be...). I can turn on the exercise games for the 360 or the exercise DVDs we have lying around. Hey. I didn't say I wasn't still going to USE the TV. I'm just not going to be as big a passive viewer anymore. A few video games and some other things will still be watched. I'm just going to cut WAY back on the mindless, surf-until-something-looks-halfway-decent-to-watch viewing that I've been doing for way too long.

I decided in the end this could be a good experiment. I'm actually kind of excited to give it a whirl. The only thing this week I'm going to allow myself to watch is the first round of the NFL draft on Thursday. It'll be hard not watching my beloved Minnesota Twins on TV, but there's always radio. And sometimes that's just as good.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a great novel I downloaded to my Barnes & Nobel Nook that I'm dying to start.

G'night all!