Every Memorial Day, I am reminded that I forgot to prepare my beach body for summer earlier in the year.
It dawned on me recently that “earlier in the year” actually means the holiday season of the previous year.
It’s easy to see how things get out of hand.
It starts with Halloween. You don’t just purchase candy to hand out to the neighborhood kiddos. You choose a jumbo bag containing most if not all of your personal confectionary favorites. You tell your husband that you purchased a lot so you don’t run out and embarrass yourself in front of the entire neighborhood. But who are you kidding? It’s all part of your grand plan to have enough left over to tide you over at snack time until that big Thanksgiving dinner you eat without apology as if you’re not one of Henry VIII’s six wives but Henry VIII himself.
Christmas season offers no reprieve. There are parties to attend, school functions featuring frosted Santa cookies, and those Christmas tins people give you that are never filled with carrot sticks. No, they’re loaded with brownies, fudge, and cookies sprinkled with red and green sugar on top.
Sugar is practically the official food group of Christmas. After all, Tchaikovsky didn't come up with the Sugar Plum Fairy entirely on his own.
Then there is New Year’s Eve and all the football games on New Year’s Day. As a rule, most people don’t stop eating in earnest until the morning of January 2ndwhen they spend part of the morning signing up for a gym membership they’ll stop using sometime around Valentine’s Day.
This year, I've decided to get ahead of the five or ten pounds I'm destined to collect around my midriff.
And the good news is that I don't need an expensive gym membership, a personal trainer, or leggings that cost more than my first car. As it turns out, mothers have been participating in some of the hottest fitness trends for decades. We just didn't realize we were exercising.
We thought we were getting ready for Christmas.
CrossFit: The Costco Challenge—If you’re looking for a full body workout, nothing beats CrossFit which combines high-intensity exercise, weightlifting, and endurance. So does shopping at Costco three days before Thanksgiving. Every muscle group is utilized as you push an ever-heavier cart down multiple aisles all the while lifting a twenty-five-pound turkey, a twenty-four pack of liter bottled waters, and a package of frozen mashed potatoes sufficient to feed a small European country into your cart. The final exercise is unloading everything into your SUV while preventing your cart from rolling away and into a parked Mercedes with a paper license plate. To increase the difficulty, schedule your workout for the Saturday before Thanksgiving, when you'll be required to navigate around 400 people who have apparently never seen a free food sample before. Unlike CrossFit, there is no instructor encouraging you. Just a man behind you waiting for your parking space.
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Reformer Pilates: The Wrapping Paper Workout—Pilates seeks to strengthen your core through controlled movements and increased flexibility. There is a common misconception that this can only be achieved on an expensive reformer Pilates machine. Absolutely not. You can achieve the same results by wrapping your Christmas presents seated on the floor. The workout begins with a forward fold to retrieve the scissors, followed by a lateral stretch to reach the tape, which has mysteriously migrated beneath the bed. Finish with a prolonged plank while holding wrapping paper in place with your left elbow because you've run out of hands. An additional challenge involves trying to straighten your legs after sitting cross-legged for two hours. At my age, this is considered an advanced maneuver. For advanced students, try standing up afterward without assistance.
Rucking: The Holiday Shopping Expedition—Here is a new entry into the fitness craze and yet for moms it’s been around since prehistoric times. With rucking, you walk with a weighted backpack which is supposed to build strength and endurance. Mothers have been doing this since the invention of the diaper bag. Add to that a four-pound purse and bags of Christmas purchases and you’ve made the weighted backpack look quite easy by comparison. To increase the difficulty, park at the farthest end of the mall and carry everything back to your car without making a second trip. This is important because mothers would rather suffer a rotator cuff injury than admit they can't carry all the bags at once.
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StairMaster: The Attic Expedition--Why pay to climb stairs that lead nowhere when you can climb actual stairs carrying a box labeled "Christmas Decorations — FRAGILE"? The workout includes multiple trips up and down the attic stairs and features a maddening search through the attic for the box containing the tree topper and tree skirt. For an advanced workout, carry the 40-pound artificial Christmas tree down the stairs while your husband stands at the bottom offering helpful suggestions such as "Watch the wall."
HIIT: High Intensity Holiday Training—This is an exercise that typically happens without any planning whatsoever. You’re expecting your in-laws to arrive for the holiday in a few hours when they call to announce that they decided to beat the traffic and left at 5am. They’ll be at the house in fifteen minutes. You make a mad dash to the guest room where you change the sheets, install fresh towels, scrub the toilet, and clean the shower. During your one-minute break, you stop to catch your breath while remembering all the things you forgot to buy for the Christmas dinner. You grab the vacuum cleaner and clean the carpet. Then you mop the bathroom floor. The workout ends when the doorbell rings. At that point, you transition into an exercise known as Pretending Everything Is Fine.
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The 10,000 Step Challenge: Christmas Dinner—Here's one requiring minimal planning. Simply strap on your fitness tracker and volunteer to host Christmas dinner. By noon, you'll have walked to the refrigerator approximately 47 times, made six trips to the garage for extra beverages, climbed the stairs three times looking for the good tablecloth, and circled the dining room trying to figure out how to seat 16 people at a table designed for eight. By 2 p.m., your smartwatch will congratulate you for reaching your daily fitness goal. At 2:03 p.m., it will suggest that you stand up and move around.
You will seriously consider throwing it into the gravy.
Yoga: The Holiday Travel Edition—Yoga improves balance, flexibility and mindfulness. Mothers traveling for the holidays can accomplish all three by trying to fit 14 Christmas presents into an overhead compartment while 200 airline passengers glare at them. Begin with Downward Dog as you search beneath your seat for your phone. Transition into Warrior Pose when the flight attendant announces there's no more overhead bin space. Conclude with Corpse Pose when your flight is canceled.
Cold Plunging: The Outdoor Christmas Decoration Challenge—People voluntarily immerse themselves in freezing water purportedly for health benefits. If you live in a cold climate, you can achieve similar health benefits by walking outside on Christmas morning in your bathrobe and slippers to figure out why your inflatable Santa is now lying face down in the snow. For maximum benefit, discover that the extension cord has become unplugged and is buried beneath six inches of snow. Experts recommend remaining in freezing temperatures for only a short period of time. Your husband will recommend that you stay out there until you've fixed Santa.
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Finally, a thought on some of the technology out there to help us stay fit. A smartwatch is a wonderful tool for staying healthy. Among other things, it informs me when I've been sitting too long. I would prefer a watch that informs my family when I've been standing too long and suggests they get off the sofa and help.
By the time Christmas is over, I will have completed hundreds of squats, thousands of steps, dozens of deadlifts, and enough high-intensity interval training to qualify for the Olympics. Unfortunately, I'll also have eaten enough Christmas cookies, pumpkin pie, and fudge to cancel out every calorie I've burned.
Which means that come Memorial Day, I'll once again be standing in front of the mirror wondering why I didn't start preparing my beach body sooner.
Maybe next year I’ll start in September. Although, given that stores now put out Halloween candy in August, I may already be too late.
