Gifts of five am.

I have a crazy schedule this semester.  If you counted the Calculus class I am studying to test out of and my internship, I would be taking 25 hours!  Luckily for my sanity, the internship is simply me working twenty hours a week, which is time consuming, but requires no outside effort on my part.

Anyway after the first week of classes, I realized I would never make it to the gym at the end of the day.  After over ten hours away from home, all I ever wanna do is go snuggle with the dogs.  Realistically every night I also have some school work that I must accomplish for the next day, so after doing that- the gym idea is pretty much out the window.  Add in the fact that I must be somewhere Monday through Friday at 8 am, and you end up with no time for the gym.  This realization hit me the Thursday of my second week of classes.

Faced with this new knowledge, I saw it was either find a way to work in working out, become anorexic or go invest in a wardrobe of elastic waist band pants and loose shirts.  Looking at a color coded print out of my schedule, because that is the sort of anal retentive woman I am, I saw an area of free time and an area of squandered time.  Normally after school, I come home and drink a glass of wine whilst becoming comatose and/or doing homework.   I also normally sleep until 6:45 or so, and barely make it to class by 8 am.  Deciding to choose the path of NO elastic waisted pants, I make a new schedule and a new decision to improve my health, sanity and poor neglected body.  I decide I will wake up at 5 am and work out for roughly two hours everyday, no questions.

It has been one week and one day of attempting to accomplish this.  Have I gotten up at 5 on the dot everyday?  No, but I have gotten in some exercise everyday.  I have also waked or jogged the dogs twice everyday.  They seem perkier and happier.  I feel hopeful I will be able to complete my undergraduate degree without gaining any more weight.  I think I will be able to recover a semblance of the toned body I used to have when free time existed.   I think I will not graduate looking like Jabba the Hutt.

The bad side of this schedule change is that you will find me getting into bed around nine thirty most nights.  The nights when I stay up "late", like midnight, I am a piece of junk the whole nest day.  I think it is a fair trade-off though.  I love knowing at 8 am that I have worked out my body and my dogs already, and that I don't have to worry about trying to squeeze in exercise later on.  This change will be good!  I can't wait to feel strong again soon!  Hooray for 5 am!!!