Things had gotten slightly out of whack at our house.
It had been really important to me to make Greg’s lunch- and not for the reasons most people might think I did it– but because I knew that if I made him lunch, he was more likely to eat better than than eating crap or not eating at all (and arriving home starving and grabbing whatever he could from the kitchen).
But the pace of my life in the past year has changed, especially because I had to speed the Chelle Summer process and creation up in preparation for my research job that ends in six weeks. And in that time, there were some things I had to let go. One of them turned out to be Greg’s lunches.
Last spring when he did the Mt. Taylor Quadrathlon– the crazy thing where he bikes, runs, snow shoes, and skis both up and down a mountain– the weather was terrible. At the finish line where I shivered for an hour wrapped in a blanket in the wind waiting for him to finish, I told him that I was retiring from future races.
When he couldn’t feel the tips of his fingers several months from frost bite, he, too, said he was retiring from the race.
But the problem was he also retired from any motivation to exercise. Lilly didn’t get her morning runs with him (she usually gets one from each of us) and the weight that he had worked so hard to lose, crept back on.
I knew that when we joined “the winter pool” in October that my 11:00 am swims weren’t going to work for him because he’s teaching. When he found out the pool and gym open at 5:00 during the week, he adjusted his swimming from evening to first thing in the morning.
That left weekends when the afternoons can be filled kids whose parents have dumped them at the pool where they exercise. I made a proposal that we swim on weekends right after my workout.
This is torture for me as I’m coming off six miles and running and walking with the dogs and I’m cold. But if I go, Greg will go, and we’ll be finished for the day. The entire reason I run first thing in the morning is because I know I would never run if I waited until afternoon. If Greg does his workout early, I can see it’s the same for him. Otherwise, it’s easy to spend the day making up every excuse in one’s head of why not to go.
Now that we are back to the post-holiday new year routine, the first thing we did Sunday morning after arriving home from LA the night before and my early morning workout was go to the pool. I knew more than anything, we had to show up.
So that left me with Greg’s lunches.
I recently found a recipe for breakfast sandwiches that can be made ahead of time and frozen. Between these and breakfast burritos, he can down them after the pool on his way to school and then we can figure out snacks to keep him full the rest of the day.
It’s a hard balance with my overflowing plate right now and it means extra work to plan, but if I want Greg to succeed with his fitness and weight loss, he shouldn’t have to go that road alone. Two are always stronger than one.
It’s worth the journey.