How Hard Are We Working?

I've spent the last two weeks gaining and losing the same pound. Up a pound one day, two days later, the pound is gone. A few days later, its up. Then, thankfully, down. And so on... I felt like a very angry yo-yo.

My first impulse was to throw the scale through the wall. I mean, it was obviously defective, right?

My second impulse was to throw my hands in the air, say to heck with the exercising (actually my words were a little stronger, but this is a public blog LOL) and go sit in my comfy chair and read for that hour instead of sweating.

My third impulse was to slap my arms over my chest, stick out my lower lip and pout like a pro.

I went with the third impulse. For about an hour. Then I sucked it up and asked myself a few questions.

Have I lost weight in this journey? Yes.

Have I lost more inches than the scale represents? Most definitely.

Have I been sick and could that affect my weight, since I had many days where I hardly ate anything and others that I walked instead of ran? Yep. For sure.

Did I make any bad eating choices in that week? Well, sure, if we want to be really honest. Eating out once a week isn't a bad thing, but eating out twice in one day was probably stupid.

And once I was feeling better, had I been working out at my maximum? Hmmm, this was the real question. This was the one that hit me in the gut, made me cringe a little, hem and haw and try to wiggle out of answering.

Since January 31 of this year, I've kept my 6 day a week, 1 hour a day exercise schedule. I've dutifully logged my calories via my heart rate monitor. I had a range, and I shot to keep my workouts in that range.

And that, I realized, was a major problem. The more I exercise, the more conditioned I become. Yes, I have to work a lot harder to burn 500 calories now than I did in February, because my heart's becoming healthier and my body is working more efficiently. But... I wasn't pushing past that. I wasn't stretching the envelope.

I wasn't working hard enough.

I was proud of myself for exercising. I stuck with the workouts, I kept my schedule. But once it became comfortable, I quit pushing. I quit trying hard enough.

So yesterday I pushed. I didn't watch a TV show while I ran, I listened to music instead. I kept the distractions to a minimum and kept my focus on pushing. And I burned an extra 100 calories in the same amount of exercise time.

How about you? When you workout, are you pushing or just showing up?

Tawny Weber writes hot, spicy stories for Harlequin Blaze. In January 2010, her novella, YOU HAVE TO KISS A LOT OF FROGS, was out in the Blazing Bedtime Story anthology and her next full length Blaze,, RIDING THE WAVES, will be out in September 2010. Come by and visit her on the web at www.tawnyweber.com