In my case, the “out ” preceded the “in,” because, as so many have reported, summer 2016 was out of control with regard to eating, drinking and socializing. It was bad, really bad! I don’t know if it was the never-ending string of warm, dry weather or the fact that we, as a country, are looking to drown our sorrows as we face one of the worst elections in American history. Either way, and I speak for myself, I ate and drank with reckless abandon and now it’s almost October and I’m just getting around to undoing the damage.

Folks, this is not my first time at this rodeo – I do this all the time. I’m always trying to get back on track after having fallen off the healthy horse. Back in March, I blogged about this very thing and crossed my fingers that I would stay on track (Back on Track, 3/2016). Oh well!

So here I go again, looking to get motivated. First things first, I need to cut back on the cocktails. I actually don’t even drink very much, but what little I do really slows me down. I’ve committed to be alcohol free until Halloween. Halloween is random, but I chose it to give myself some structure and also, I don’t have that much on the calendar for October so I thought it was doable. I love Halloween so that seemed a reasonable end date and an opportunity to celebrate what I hope to be good behavior for a month.

Next up – stop eating everything in sight. No fancy diet this time, just dialing back my general consumption habits -bigtime. I once had a facial by a tiny, adorable Swedish woman who told me the best way a woman can lose weight is to “shut her mouth.” OK, I’ll give this a try.

Finally – back to the gym. I don’t know what I was thinking this summer, but I didn’t exercise at all. This was probably the biggest contributor to my downfall.

Thankfully, I’m motivated once again and I’m at a new gym that happens to offer some good Spin classes. I’ve always liked Spinning, but my old gym didn’t have classes that worked with my schedule. Now, after just a few Spin classes, I’m remembering why I like it.

Benefits of Spin Class

It’s a great workout – I sweat like crazy and, for me, that’s a good thing. I totally appreciate the cleansing factor of a good sweat.

The Spin classes I’m doing are 45 minutes long. This is genius. I’ve always done hour long classes and I can’t get over how quickly these 45 minutes classes fly by.

The new Spin bikes have a display that shows RPMs (rotations per minute) and the instructor calls out the exact RPM you should be striving for at each interval. It’s really nice knowing if you should push harder or back off.

Spin class puts me in control and there are days when that really matters. Spinning is an activity that allows you to progress at your own pace without everyone in the class knowing when you aren’t keeping up.

Finally, Spinning is easy on my back and joints – after Spin class I don’t feel quite as achy as I do after higher impact activities. This really helps me to keep going back.

So for now, I spin, I sweat and I swear I will try to keep this going, at least until Halloween. After that, I’ll re-assess -we’ll be closing in on the holidays after all.