Moving on

I am trying to decide what to do about working out now that the place I was going has gone out of business. I'm assuming that its demise is permanent and that I won't see my trainer again and that he's probably going to move on with his life and do other things, leaving those of us who were working with him to find other options as to what to do about staying in shape. I've been checking out several local facilities, from the Kent State Wellness and Recreation Center to the Ravenna Athlectic Center, or the RAC, to a few other local facilities. What I feel like I need is a personal trainer, someone who I can work with and who can help me to get and stay fit despite some slight physical limitations and my age. I need to be able to do all of this and not do anything that will cause me any injuries, so I need someone who knows how to work with middle aged folks like me who have arthritic joints, previous injuries and other limitations but who still want to stay fit. So I need someone who knows what they are doing and who can show me how to maximize what I can do to get back into something resembling good shape as well as how to lose some weight that I seem to have put on in recent days that I very much want to lose.

I know that one of the things I need to do is to drink far more water than I do this time of year. I tend to go for hot drinks like coffee, tea, hot chocoloate, hot cider, etc. instead of drinking good old fashioned water. I bought us a Brita pitcher for work so we have filtered water available at the office, meaning I don't need to buy bottled water. It's available in the staff kitchen in the fridge, and I brought a large plastic tumbler from home to keep at my desk to fill with water, but I never do so. Given my lengthy history of kidney stones, I could well benefit from drinking more water and it does aid in weight loss as well. I just need to discipline myself to do so and to remind myself of just how painful each and every one of those kidney stone attacks have been. It's a steep price I pay for not drinking enough water, so I need to get with the program and just start drinking water each and every day. I drink a lot when I work out, but since I'm not working out anymore - at least not until I find a new gym - I'm not drinking much, if any, water at all, except to take my meds and my vitamins each day. Once I get back into the workout habit and start regularly going to a gym, I know my water drinking habit will come back, but for now, I'm not getting nearly enough as it is and I definitely need to do something about that.

So for now, I am looking for ways to move on after the loss of my trainer and the gym I was going to these past few years. Yes, it's rough to consider starting over with a new trainer, a new gym and new routines - IF I can motivate myself during these colder months of the year when I get into a sort of cocoon mode - but I want to stay fit and healthy through these middle years of my life and what better way to do so than to build on what I have accomplished under Jason's tutelage. I sure don't want to lose what I've gained thus far, and if I can't motivate myself to go to a gym, well, I do have some weights and bands at home that I can use if I don't want to leave the house to go workout, if I can get myself to do it alone at home instead of wanting to curl up on the sofa and sleep like I do most days when I get home from work. It remains to be seen how I am going to deal with all of this, but right now, I don't want to have to go so long without working out that I'm going to have to start all over again rebuilding what I spent so long gaining in the first place. If I'm going to get back to the workout routine, it's going to have to be sooner rather than later, because the longer I wait, the tougher it's going to be to get back into it at all.