I have no reason to be physically unfit. I guess what I mean by that is I have no excuse for my Jabba the Hutt predilections. I’m a stay at home mom, working a very part time job that is 90% accomplished from the crumb-covered laptop in my den. I have a child both old enough and trustworthy enough to watch his younger siblings for the recommended 30 minutes, three times a week when I should be exercising. And yet each passing week finds my rear end expanding and my consumption of sugar increasing. I’d love to be one of those moms with the killer arms I see at the park, or walking everywhere with their kids. I know on an intellectual level that I should arrest this alarming march towards becoming a permanent part of the couch fabric; it’s just that it isn’t a priority at this point.
Every time I open my browser, I am deluged by the blogosphere, Pinterest, the women’s health magazines, all shouting from every side, exhorting and begging me to do something- anything- about my bad habits. Each and every one offers a solution promised to be tailor made to my particular situation. The Juicing. The Clean Eating. The Incorporate your Baby/Pet/statue of Ba’al into your yoga routine, The Make a Commitment to A Friend. The Get More Sleep/5 am Workout. I’ve tried every one of these, some of them recently enough that Google still pushes ads for them, and I now feel I am in a position to offer a rebuttal.
The Juicing
We bought a juicer with the best intentions. Health! Quick and easy nutrients! Green things!
Ok, firstly, vegetables are expensive. Secondly, juicing removes most of the nutrient value of said vegetables and leaves you with a sugary juice. So if I am going to drink sugar juice anyway, why can’t I just drink apple juice? I don’t have to clean our juicer to have apple juice (or even use a cup to drink it, if I am alone by the fridge). And the last time we used the juicer, we naively juiced radishes. I can still feel my sinuses weeping gently at the memory. The real reason this won’t benefit me, however, is that the second we bring juice into the house, the children descend upon it like a pack of hyena pups and neither I or my husband ever get so much as a sip.
The Clean Eating
I am as attracted to Clean Eating as an earnest and lightly bearded English lit. major is to a Teach for America opening. I find it simultaneously noble and fatuous so I can’t claim to have wholeheartedly adopted the philosophy behind the movement. But, I’ve done strict Clean Eating and I can tell you what is wrong with it. I miss sugar. I miss sugar and bread and processed sugar and bread processed with sugar. I lasted two weeks on this quest and at the end of it I felt clean and virtuous and absolutely ready to stuff my face with serotonin boosting happy crap food.
The Include your Pet/Baby in your yoga routine
It is my lot in life to be surrounded by energetic, small, eat-often loud things. I do not breed docile children. The last time I lifted my baby in the air above my head, he savagely head butted me. I have no animals who are willing to be handled mid-air while I balance precariously on one leg, sweating. I am not coordinated enough to simultaneously life weights and align my chakras. In this lifestyle choice, I am firmly on the side of the small “participants”. If I don’t want to be doing yoga, I totally get that they don’t want to do it either.
The Make a Commitment to A Friend
My best friend is Dawn. Dawn lives 90 miles from me. I make periodic commitments to her that we will work out on the same days, track our meals on Instagram, and do 15 minutes of arms/legs/abs/eyebrows a day. And I bail on her. Every. Time. I am a spectacularly faithless friend. I get bored easily and I am like a little devil on Dawn’s shoulder when I am tired of it all. I want her to cheat with me. More often than not, she does. But, Dawn is also 5”8 and perfect so she can afford it. I just enjoy the company.
The Get More Sleep/ 5am Workout
I still have yet to understand how these do not automatically cancel each other out.
When you are courted from every side by an industry determined to make you chase the chimera of fitness, it’s natural to try on a few of these ideas for size. Hell, I still get emails from a yearly triathlon I signed up for (and did not compete in). What I have noticed is that the one thing they haven’t figured out how to market around is apathy. I am currently its poster child. I occasionally fantasize about being a healthy, active mom with the cute pants and the bike with a baby chariot on the back. In the meantime, I’ll keep wearing a groove between the couch and the coffee maker, trying to be the best unfit mother I can be.
About the author: Mara Campbell is a freelance writer and musician living in the Upper Midwest. She has three perfect sons, loves snow, and refuses to try lutefisk.
