Personal Change

My new hypothesis: Exercise is the best and easiest first step towards any form of personal change.

So, the problem with all of the revelations I have been having about exercise in the last month is that they are all cliches I have heard over and over, and so they don't sound impressive. Things like "Begin where you are", "the key thing is to stick with it", "make it routine" or "you'll have more energy if you exercise every day".

But they are all true!

Here is my current exercise routine (five weeks in):
Monday: Strength training and cardio on the stationary bike, postnatal yoga
Tuesday: Lap swimming
Wednesday: Yoga
Thursday: Strength training and cardio on the stationary bike
Friday: Lap swimming
Saturday: Ashtanga yoga, climb the rope in my barn
Sunday is a day of rest.
Everyday: heft 17 pound baby everywhere

I feel so much happier and content. I can feel myself getting stronger. I feel more energized about everything else in my life: tutoring, cooking dinner, cleaning my house, writing (is it a coincidence that I began writing this blog just days after beginning my exercise routine?), my relationship with my husband, caring for my baby.

I was trying to think of other candidates for a best or easiest first step:
Losing weight?
Now, I haven't ever lost a substantial amount of weight (except for the 20 pounds I lost the day my baby was born) and I have heard a lot of people who have lost weight talk about how great they feel, but could they be feeling great because they are exercising regularly?
Eating better?
Certainly exercising and eating well have a lovely symbiotic relationship. It is easier to exercise when you are eating well (I once went for a five-mile run right after demolishing a cannolli and that was a miserable experience.) and easier to eat well when you are exercising. I have a vivid memory of eating carrots as a teenager after going for a run and they were so delectable and I could feel their good nutrients traveling through my body. Just yesterday I was drinking a tall glass of water and noticing how sweet it tasted. Certainly eating more healthfully is a good thing to strive for, but I maintain that beginning an exercise routine (going for a walk, to a yoga class, to the gym) is a simpler step than eating better (deciding what "better" means, going to the grocery store, using the vegetables you bought before they rot and you have to throw them away, trying out new recipes, gathering the spices you've never heard of that you now need, being starving but needing to wash and chop strawberries to stir in with your yogurt because that's the readiest-to-eat thing that you have in the house) and more likely to be effective in inspiring you to establish other personal changes, perhaps mostly because of the energized yet relaxed feeling that follows exercise (as opposed to the heavier, sleepier feeling that follows even a healthy meal).
Writing?
I have been a consistent diary writer for 21 years, ever since my first light green plastic diary that I started in third grade and a blogger for one month. I do love the ritual of daily writing. I find it meditative, clarifying, illuminating, healing. . . While diary writing is mentally and emotionally healthy, it has not physical aspect. I find that exercise, being primarily physical, has many of the healthy-for-the-mind-and-soul meditative aspects of writing simply as side benefits, and so soothes and invigorates me as a whole person. Again, writing is a complementary activity as my state of mind while exercise is conducive to generating ideas for writing.
Visual art?
I easily enter a flow state when I am drawing or painting. It is one of my favorite single activities. I find it challenging, rewarding, and gloriously all-consuming in its focus. I feel that it is the one aspect of my life still missing right now in the new life as a new mom I have been building up for myself. So, the very fact that I have not yet managed to work art-making consistently into my life makes it clear that for me at least it is not as easy a first step as exercise.

I'll keep you posted on how well the exercise and other personal changes go!