5:00 am

I'm trying to get into this weekday cycle where I get up at 5:00 am and use our elliptical machine.

Let me explain. Besides the obvious - I need to get into shape, and the maybe not so apparent - we spent a lot on the damn elliptical machine and I want to get my moneys worth. You may be asking yourself why the heck I am getting up at 5:00 in the morning when I am a stay at home mom. Why indeed?

The first reason is easy. I have tried to use the elliptical in the presence of The Goon Squad.

The last time I tried that I had to get off the thing three times in the first five minutes.  Two of those times were to break up fights. The other time was because Ian needed an emergency glass of water. It just isn't worth it.

The second reason is that by the time Gabe gets home at night I really just want to sit down. I am done. Wiped out.  I just want to sit on the couch and drink a beer and watch "Top Chef".

The third reason involves paranoia. Sure, I could probably work out at six thirty, but if the kids are sleeping and they wake up and they call me and I can't hear them because I am downstairs on the stupid machine and I have to watch SportsCenter really loud to hear it over the noise of my panting and weeping the elliptical and then they freak out because they think they have been abandoned I would hate myself forever and ever.

*deep breath*

Actually, Claudia probably wouldn't even care. She would just wake up, go in the kitchen and microwave herself a frozen bagel. Ian wakes up poorly. He needs comforting. It is completely genetic. When I was a baby I woke up crying every time I slept. In fact, I still feel like crying every time I wake up, but since I am a grown up I feel like it would be inappropriate. Plus Gabe would make fun of me.

Anyway, back to the 5:00 thing. Gabe leaves the house for work at about 5:30 every morning, so in order for me to do a 20 minute session on the elliptical (shut up. 20 minutes is a lot when you are as out of shape as I am) while someone is upstairs with the kids I have to get up at 5:00. Here is the weird part. As must as I detest waking up early, I feel great.

Seriously. I feel really good. Plus, since I am getting up at five instead of seven I have two extra hours in the morning. As an added bonus the kids usually sleep until at least 6:30 so I also get an hour of ALONE TIME. No joke. Yesterday morning I found a great recipe for dinner and this morning I drank two cups of coffee and read everything in my feed reader. It was awesome. So yeah, I get up at 5:00am on weekdays now and I am surprisingly okay with that. And I feel good about myself for the first time in a while.

Byt he way, that picture is totally not me. As you may have guessed if I looked like that I wouldn't be dragging my ass out of bed in the morning to lose weight. I would just wear really tight fitting clothes all of the time. And prance. I'd totally prance. A lot.

Oh! And guess what else? I've got a new trainer! Devra and I have started working out with a personal trainer twice a week. We even started a blog all about it. Maybe I'll look like that woman after all.




Adapted from a post originally appearing on Sarah and the Goon Squad. You can read more about Sarah's quest for weight loss on her new blog Loser Moms.