Exercise Addiction

I believe I have exercised every day for at least the last six months, probably longer, though the farthest back would be January or February, because I was so sick last winter and couldn't possibly have exercised. Lately I've been running five or six days a week, and walking or going to yoga on days I don't run. Over the summer I only ran two or three times a week, at best, but I swam every day and walked, oh, countless miles. The walking is my default: last spring I would walk to work and back, half an hour each way, and this fall I've walked all sorts of places--to the subway, instead of taking the bus; downtown, instead of driving. I walk to yoga, take a yoga class, and walk back. Really, I'm quite obsessed, and, besides the fitness and weight implications that are always there, my biggest concern is that if I don't work out, I'll lose my mind.

I feel this in general, but usually it's more tempered: I must work out most days so I can keep myself in a general state of sanity. But lately the idea of not working out is itself anxiety-producing. So yesterday, when it was snowy in the morning, and I had to drive to work in the middle of the day, and be a mother at the end of the day, I tried to tell myself it was OK to take a day off, I mean, I hadn't taken a day off since I could recall, but at 9 p.m., post-children, I found myself googling "free yoga" and "yoga video online" and "free yoga video online," and that's how I found this class, which was easy and relaxing (and dissolved into a bizarre cloud medley at the end), but taught me something new about child's pose and twists, and kept me sane for another day.

(This morning [cold and ice] I went for the first time in months to the gym [treadmill and elliptical].)