" title="Notes from an Accidental Scholar"> Notes from an Accidental Scholar

Cour­tesy of Shirt.Woot

On Twit­ter the other day, some­one asked about exer­cise in grad­u­ate school. Like you, I’m busy with writ­ing and life, but I make it a point to work out 4–5 times per week. Before you think I’m one of those ultra­fit “super­moms” who throw elab­o­rate tod­dler birth­day par­ties while writ­ing my dis­ser­ta­tion with per­fect man­i­cured nails, let me just say HAHAHAHAHAAA! My house is much less Cosby Show and way more Roseanne. I go to the gym because it’s a break. My local YMCA offers free babysit­ting for up to two hours, so I have, in a word: incentive.

I used to strug­gle with get­ting to the gym. I would pay out the nose for gym mem­ber­ships only to go for a week and give up. Start­ing an exer­cise rou­tine is easy, main­tain­ing it is fuck­ing hard. But I think, no, I KNOW, that tak­ing time for yoga/jogging/meditation/Zumba is cru­cial to your intel­lec­tual main­te­nance. When you’re writ­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion, it’s the equiv­a­lent of run­ning a brain marathon and you need to keep your mind and body fit. I don’t mean any­thing dras­tic, I sim­ply mean set­ting aside time for your­self. Some peo­ple knit, oth­ers bake, I exer­cise and if you want to work­out, you can to.

Like I said before, I used to join gyms and lose momen­tum after a week. Why? Let’s blame the “excuse cen­ter” of your brain. My excuse cen­ter goes into over­drive when I have to do some­thing I don’t want to do. I am incred­i­bly stub­born and this can make me my own worst enemy. So in the inter­est of get­ting you off your butt, here are my top 5 excuses and how I deal with them and maybe they’re res­onate with you too:

1) I don’t have time! Yes you do. Work­ing out doesn’t take long, and if the thought of leav­ing your dis­ser­ta­tion for an hour freaks you the hell out, then go for 30 min­utes or do one of these 20 minute yoga ses­sions. The fact is, a good work­out boosts your energy which will give you more sta­mina to write.

2) Ugh, I just don’t feel like it today. It’s one thing if you’re sick, you should never work­out when you’re sick (duh!), it’s a com­pletely dif­fer­ent thing if you’re just unmo­ti­vated or feel­ing lazy. Rule Num­ber One in regards to phys­i­cal health and fit­ness, you have to make it a habit. This is hard because a habit, by def­i­n­i­tion, is a reg­u­lar prac­tice that you do, often with­out think­ing about it. When (re)starting an exer­cise rou­tine there’s noth­ing reg­u­lar or unthink­ing about. It can feel like you’re adding extra stress into your work rou­tine, which for con­trol freaks like me is sim­ply chaos. It takes three weeks to build a habit and make it stick, but start easy. When I first started going to the gym, my goal was to go on Tues­days and Thurs­days for three weeks. That’s 6 times total, easy. Work­out bud­dies help, so does mak­ing bets. I told myself that I only had to do it for three weeks and if I didn’t like it, I’d quit the gym–but I had to go for three weeks, no exceptions.

3) It’s raining/snowing/hurricaning out­side. Lis­ten, I live in New York, bad weather is ugly. It’s cold, wet, dirty, sloppy, basi­cally: the per­fect excuse to hide indoors. So when it’s piss­ing down rain, the thing that really gets me out the door is know­ing how awe­some I will feel for the rest of the day. Even if I have a shitty writ­ing day after the gym, I won’t feel like the day is a total loss because at least I did some­thing. How­ever, some­times it is weath­er­poca­lypse out­side and it would be point­less to wade through waist high snow for a work­out. On days like that, just stay inside. It would be good to down­load free pod­casts or invest in work­out DVDs, I like Jil­lian Michaels’ 30-Day Shred is avail­able on DVD on Ama­zon Instant.

4) I went to a con­fer­ence for a few days and blew my entire rou­tine. Tell me if this sounds famil­iar. You’ve man­aged to work­out for 5 weeks straight, it’s unheard of, you feel amaz­ing! Then you leave town for a few days and instead of using the hotel gym, you sleep in and shmooze with Duke’s his­tory depart­ment. When you come back, you feel like that 5 week stretch was for noth­ing, you have to start over, you ruined your streak. If you’ve been in this posi­tion, just remem­ber that a habit is a prac­tice. If you went a week with­out prac­tic­ing, it doesn’t mean you should give up on it alto­gether. Just pick up where you left off and keep going.

5) Exer­cise is bor­ing. Yes, it can be. I get bored doing the same thing every­day so I shake it up. I take classes, I do cir­cuit train­ing, I run. If the thought of going to the gym is too bor­ing for words, change your playlist, go for a walk in your neigh­bor­hood or the local park, or sign up for a dif­fer­ent class at your gym.

If you want to exer­cise it is within your con­trol to do so. Listed below are resources that worked for me, hope­fully they’ll help you too. Good luck!

Couch to 5k — C25K Run­ning Pro­gram — I’ve been doing this for the past 3 weeks. It has an iPhone app and the site is a great all around fit­ness resource

one hun­dred push ups, two hun­dred sit ups, seven weeks to fit­ness, etc. — I like this one because all you need is your body, also a great all around fit­ness resource

Nike Run­ning — Another iPhone app that syncs your runs on the inter-webs so you can see your progress in cool infographics

Nike Women — iPhone app of free cir­cuit train­ing work­outs that are seri­ous butt kick­ers. It’s an incen­tive app so after you work­out for a num­ber of hours, new work­outs are made avail­able to you

red­dit fit­ness resource — Red­dit is a news site with user sub­mit­ted con­tent. They have an incred­i­ble fit­ness and nutri­tion page with tons of help­ful tips. Red­dit is FULL of nerds, so most of their con­tent is aimed at the desk-sendentary like us

Exer­cise News, Videos, Reviews and Gos­sip — Lifehacker

Dis­claimer: Of course, this is not a sub­sti­tute for advice from your doc­tor. You should always con­sult with your health­care provider before start­ing any fit­ness or nutri­tion program.