Vol. 84 - You Better Work

On fitness

A few final reminders. The paid version of this here newsletter is launching very soon. Please consider upgrading to paid if you haven’t already (and a huge thanks to those of you who have). 100% of the money generated here will go to the Pregnancy Justice nonprofit, who work to aid people facing pregnancy-related charges.

Anyway, on to the newsletter.

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Yesterday, I made Emily go run.

It was early on a Sunday morning. The roads were still wet, the sun barely up. Emily was still groggy from the night’s sleep. She wasn’t sure when she was going to fit a workout in that day.

“Go now,” I said.

She didn’t want to. And understandably so. It was near freezing and she hadn’t even had a cup of coffee.

But after some goading, she went out for a three or four or five-mile run. The person who came back from that run was nothing like the person who left the house, groggy and hardly psyched that she was going out in the cold, damp morning for a run. The person who came back was the person I feel in love with a decade-and-a-half ago (not that I don’t love the groggy, morning version of Emily). She was peppy and effervescent, ready to attack the day. She was irrepressibly optimistic and full of enthusiasm.

As soon as she got back, she did for me what I had done for her. That is, forced me to do my fitness thing even though I might have preferred to stay at home with a hot coffee and my babies. Alas, I pulled my cycling kit on and went for the regular 50-mile group ride that I often miss on Sunday mornings. Some days, I’m the groggy morning one and it’s her basically forcing me out the door.

At this point in our lives, this is how most of our fitness happens, especially on the weekends. One goes out for a run or a ride or a workout class while the other stays behind with the kids. When the first comes back, the other rolls out, almost like a fitness tag team (this is also, not coincidentally, when most of our kids’ screentime happens, tbh).

Emily and I work out for several reasons. We work out so we can hopefully live as long as we possibly can, both for altruistic reasons (to be around for and with our kids) as well as selfish ones (because I like living. It’s a trip).

We work out because we want to look good and, more importantly, we want to feel good, especially as we enter middle age.

We work out because we like to eat well, and while we do generally skew toward healthy diets, we both love pizza and tacos and ice cream and chocolate. And while most of those calories aren’t good calories, they’re a lot better than if we didn’t burn them off six days a week. (Also, I defy any parent of a five- and a two-year-old to not dip into their kids’ snacks. Defy, I say!) We work out because, as an Italian-American, carbs are part of my DNA and life without them in abundance is a life I don’t want to live.

Most of all, we work out as a way to maintain our sanity. Because sane parents make good parents.

As true as this paradigm is for me, it’s a hundred times more so for Em.

As long as I’ve known her, Emily has been a runner. When we first started dating, she would spend the night at my apartment at the northernmost tip of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, wake up before sunrise, and run back to her place on Second Street and Avenue A (which, for the uninitiated, is in Lower Manhattan, which meant running across the Williamsburg Bridge, often after nights that involved a good bit of drinking. What a champ). Those days, fitness played a slightly different but still similar role. We were less thinking about how long we might live or how we could keep our bodies pliable in middle age and probably more thinking about how we could look our best without any clothes on. Those days, fitness was a more social endeavor.

These days, there’s an entirely new element to our focus on fitness. That is, when we work out—whether to give ourselves a shot of endorphins or adrenaline or just to get the fuck out of the house and have some alone time—we’re both better parents.

Last week’s newsletter focused on why I don’t drink much anymore. In short, because hangovers make me a lesser parent. In many ways, fitness plays the same role. If I don’t work out, I’m less patient, less enjoyable to be around. Same with Emily (in fact, both she and I would argue that she’s even less enjoyable to be around than I am when she’s not working out).

And so, in that regard, the maintenance of our fitness routines is as much for our kids as it is for Em and me.

But also because I still want to look good naked.