26 days of my 30s

Today my usual morning workout was disrupted because the website for the current class I'm doing was down. That meant that instead of whatever was on the calendar for today, I did a quick from-memory run through of a previous workout instead.

As I was doing it, I was thinking about how much effort I put in over the past decade to disentangle exercise from food. I definitely used to think of exercise as a way to "earn" some sort of right to eat what I wanted. And that, my friends, is not healthy. All those programmes that involve earning more calories through exercise so that you can eat more....that's a terrible mental/emotional relationship with both exercise and food.

Learning that exercise is a good and desirable thing in itself, and that how I choose to eat is separate from that (though still needs care along with enjoyment!), is, if I'm 100% honest, still a work in progress. But I have come such a long way that I have hope that maybe by the time I turn forty in 26 days, I'll have it all worked out. 😂

Today's poem has literally nothing whatsoever to do with this, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It's about that turn of the season toward 40...and though I have no intention of dying my hair (too lazy), I do intend to live on in a blaze of glory, LOL. 

This is "Pushing Forty" by Scottish author Alison Fell...whose birthday must also be in the autumn, as she perfectly captures the way things are at this time of year and this time of life.

Just before winter

we see the trees show

their true colours:

the mad yellow of chestnuts

two maples like blood sisters

the orange beech

braver than lipstick

Pushing forty, we vow

that when the time comes

rather than wither

ladylike and white

we will henna our hair

like Colette, we too

will be gold and red

and go out

in a last wild blaze

not my dinner today, but so delicious I am happy just remembering it from a few weeks ago! I'm so happy I learned to make my own pizza.