I've started to work out regularly once more. I've always been a rather sporadic fitness enthusiast, with stretches of inactivity interrupted by fits of motivation, ranging in length from a week or so of half-hearted jogging up to a full season of Track and Field in high school. This time feels a little different- I feel like I'm building a habit that has the potential to be a routine part of my life for awhile.

You see, in the past I've had the tendency to be overly ambitious: "Sure, I can start running 2 miles a day, 5 days a week, even though my feet haven't been near my Nikes in six months. No problem!" Any exercise program that starts out like that is bound to fizzle and flop after less than two weeks. Not to mention the fact that when one lives in Minnesota, one can't ever count on the sidewalks being in any shape for running or walking.

Basically, all I've been doing is fitness walking on a treadmill almost daily, and a simple weights workout 3 days week. Using a treadmill keeps me from making excuses about the weather, and has the added benefit of keeping me from slowing to inertia, as is my wont. And the weights? Well, I just like to lift weights- I always have. I like to feel strong, and to know that I'm getting yet stronger. I'm exceedingly happy to discover that my strength hasn't diminished much since my last fitness spurt; now I can focus on increasing the weights I use.

I'd be lying, though, if I claimed to be exercising merely for the health benefits. It may not be in keeping with my usual feminist sentiments, but damnit, I want to look good! To work from the theme from Joan Jacobs Brumberg's excellent book The Body Project, my body has been my 'project', on and off, for most of my life. In my childhood diaries, you can find entries from an 8-year-old me lamenting how fat I am. That fact, I believe, is a sick statement on the state of society, but just because I can intellectually acknowledge society's effect on my body image doesn't mean that that effect is negated. I can't help exercising with the more tangible goals of a flat stomach, defined muscles, and smooth thighs in mind, rather than the 'liberated', but more abstract goals of mental clarity and lifelong health.

That is not to say that my current, rather vain, impetus to work out won't eventually, as exercise works itself into my day-to-day life, become a less superficial one. I've got to start somewhere, don't I?

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Hearing: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill