How much attention do you pay to your health?
September 21, 2007 by Deb
Filed under Freelance Writing
Ryan Caldwell at Performancing posted an excellent piece this morning, 23 Simple Health Tips for Bloggers. Though his advice is geared towards those who blog for a living, freelance writers can take note as well. My struggle with baby weight is well known – my biggest issue is finding the time to keep in shape.
How hard can it be?
Friends and family don’t understand it – I’m home all day, why can’t I lose weight? It’s really not that simple. Let’s forget for a minute that when you’re home all day the refrigerator beckons. Let’s forget that my job requires me to be in a sitting position. And lets forget that half my life is spent driving back and forth to soccer games, the library and birthday parties. Because the bulk of my time is spent being a mom, I use what free time I have to work. It’s a dilemma….do I work or do I work out? Working out keeps me healthy, but then time is money.
Time to take actionÂ
After seeing myself in photographs after a family event this past summer, I decided to take action – work be damned. Every morning as soon as I deposit The Boy onto the school bus, I walk to the nearest traffic light and back. About a mile and a half. I also made drastic changes to the shopping list. No more candy. No more junk. Even though the majority of that stuff is for Mr. Ng and our son, it’s just too much temptation. The Boy enjoys fruit and healthy snacks, we can save the other stuff for special occasions.
I have to work, there’s no getting around it, but I will no longer do it at the expense of my, and my family’s health. How much attention do you pay to your health?
Discuss…
Deb
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Phil –
Thanks for your kind and prompt response. I appreciate your explanation, and I feel better about the whole thing now.
I am actually in the process of raising my rates right now — as in, I am giving my new rates to new clients, and I have raised my rates with a couple of clients where I felt I was getting a raw deal, but I have left some of my older and more reliable clients at the same rates. I agree that raising one’s rates is a useful tool — I took offense because I felt you were making a judgment on my current rates. I guess it hurts my pride to feel I’m being told that, when I myself am always telling writers that they don’t have to work for free or cheap in order to get started.
And finally, I mentioned the balance between personal life and business because I feel I am struggling with it right now. That is why I am too busy — not because I have too much work, but because I am having some difficulties managing my time now that I have some new distractions in my life.
Thanks again for your prompt explanation, and I hope there are no hard feelings that I took it the wrong way!
Katharine,
Glad we’re cool. One idea that has helped me balance items is, like Gina recommended, scheduling personal time as well as work time.
I did this when I coached my kids in sports (they no longer play) and for other items.
Franklin Planner has some good suggestions for this. It recommends ranking items A (must be done), B (would be good to be done) and C (will attempt to get to), then 1-xx within those categories. Then carry over from one day to the next. I try to keep such a schedule (not perfect) electronically because there are too many changes. Of course, there are those days I play fireman for my clients and fail to upgrade the calendar.
Phil,
Thanks for the tips. I’m usually pretty decent about time management — not the best, but I still get stuff done. Every once in a while, I try out another method of improving my habits — scheduling, keeping a time sheet, etc. Unfortunately, although I’ve stuck with all of them, they all lose their effectiveness after a while.
My challenge right now is that I’m trying to make time for a huge change in my life (my horse). Although I am starting to fall into a new daily schedule, it’s just not happening as quickly as I would like!
Time management is a big issue. My creative urges don’t seem to come at appropriate times. I actually send myself e-mails to remind me of things because I know I will be in front of the pc sometime during the day. This post has reminded me that it is time to remind myself to get a check up. I’ll send myself an email!
Oh wow Micah. Didn’t think of that.
I was actually also thinking of setting up a personal Wordpress blog and drip posts to be published at certain times during a day. I would then include an RSS feed on my gmail account, which I religiously check every 10 minutes. A roundabout way of doing things, but if it works, hey, why not.
You know, I have not figured out how to do RSS yet. That is new to me. The idea of dripping is a good one.
It’s too bad Wordpress didn’t give me a warning that I made a mistake with the ads. Had a caught that I would have used blogger in the first place.
I’ve been working on affilate links so far.
Micah –
When I think of something away from my computer, I’ll often send myself an email from my cell phone. Same reason: I know I’ll be in front of my computer at some point!
In the past year, exercise has become more important to me than my work.
For years I walked every day, ate small, low-calorie and low-fat meals, and just couldn’t figure out why I slowly gained weight. It was only about a pound or two a year, but after 10 years — YUCK!
Exactly one year ago this week I joined an exercise program a friend recommended, and then I made the discovery that everything the magazines and doctors had told me about getting moderate exercise was misleading. Moderate exercise didn’t get me fit or help me lose weight; it just got me tired. To get fit, I needed to exercise three times a week, to the point of sweating, and I needed to do a variety of workouts (aerobics, resistance, etc.)
Fortunately, I found an extremely aggressive, movitating workout program run by a professional trainer that meets three days a week. I attend it without fail — even if friends are visiting, the weather is bad, I have a cold, I’ve pulled a muscle in my back or twisted my wrist, my mother-in-law wants to have everyone over to dinner that night, etc. etc. etc.
Results? After one year I’ve lost 30 pounds of really hideous fat, gained 15 pounds of muscle (for a net loss of 15 pounds) and went from wearing size 14 jeans to size 8.
You may gather this from my tone, but I’m extremely angry at all the “experts” who dished out the drivel about parking your car at the end of the mall parking lot and walking up and down stairs to get fit. My experience (at age 52) is that it takes hard work, professional coaching, sweat, and not being wimpy about injuries. (There will always be injuries.)
As Sally noted, signed up for a class really made the difference for me. To be blunt: My home life and my professional life are filled with things and people who care about what I’m doing for them, and could care less what I’m doing for me. To exercise, I have to get completely out of the house, into an exercise-focused environment with exercised-focused people.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I wish I’d known about this 20 years ago.
Karen, I relate to what you said about doing those little things and how it did not help much. I do have to point that, can you imagine how much worse it would be if those little things had not been done?
I struggle with healthy eating, and any kind of exercise so I give you a great deal of credit for taking care of yourself so well.
Micah,
I can’t begin to tell you how much I wish I’d discovered ferocious exercise in my 30s. Where’s time travel when I need it?
Do the little things help? Maybe. But there’s also evidence that if you exercise only twice a week — say two good long walks — you are, unfortunately, starting at the bottom of the fitness hill each time…there is no cumulative effect. You will maintain your curent fitness level. But if you exercise harder, three times a week, you build muscle, which on your next exercise outing burns more fat, etc, etc. Essentially, you become an increasingly efficient calorie-burning machine.
And, weirdly, once you have the nice machine, you only want to feed it good food in small portions (sort of the way you take better care of the upholstery on a new car). I find it makes the eating part of my life surprisingly easy and guilt-free (for the first time since I was a teenager).
Ferocious exercise has got to be sexy and fun! Have you considered a roller derby team? (I’m so sad that I can’t do it, my knees are too old.) And Baptiste Power Yoga (an accessible type of Vinyasa yoga) looks great…there are studios in various places.
http://www.baronbaptiste.com/pages/affiliate.htm
Unfortunately, the program I’m in (which has a mix of young moms and 40- and 50-somethings, ranging in size from 120 pounds to 250 pounds, at all fitness levels) is unique. It’s run by my Seattle neighbor, fitness guru Susan Powter, who emphasizes modifying all the moves for your current fitness level. Susan is incredibly motivating and undeniably edgy. She’s experimenting with putting her exercise and diet stuff online (free with signup), which I think will work for folks who have already worked out with her. Whether someone could really “jump in” via the online stuff, I’m not sure…
http://www.susanpowtershow.com/
Karen
Karen,
That is great that you have a fitness expert next door!
I’m more the work out in the home kind of person.
I borrow dvd’s from the library for power walking when I’m into it.