Brain Versus Body Fitness

It's Wednesday evening at 5pm and I'm sitting perched at my kitchen counter. I have a glass of 13th Street Riesling beside me and I'm staring numbly at my computer screen. My brain hurts. I just spent six straight hours in meetings (correction: running meetings) and then spent the last two hours of my day madly typing up the meeting minutes. I feel more exhausted from having sat all day thinking and talking than I do after getting up at 5am to swim or run and then putting in a full day.

I find physical activity invigorating.

Mental activity, on the other hand, is draining.

Is that because I'm out of shape? Mentally speaking?? (shut up Breanne!)

Or is it because I spent the day nibbling on peanut butter cups, Oreos and Swedish berries? My blood sugar is a fabulous 5.5 but I'm pretty sure my digestive system is reeling and my brain is in some sort of sugar coma. So we're having chicken and a salad for dinner. No carbs to send things climbing and low calorie to balance out the day.

Poor Doug - I overeat during the day so he gets a light supper.

I'm sorry folks, I'm nattering on. I'll blame it on the fact that I'm in a bit of a brain fog. This blog does have a point actually.

It's all about exercise and timing.

Here's the deal. Normally, my day involves a lot of sitting at my desk typing, interspersed with conversations, trips up and down the stairs and meetings with people. On average, I think I'm alone about 5 hours a day, I talk to people 1-2 hours a day and I'm walking around doing stuff for about an hour. That system works for me. I swim before work on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and, unless I have something after work, I run after work on Tuesday and Thursday. If I can't run after work, I run before. I'm happy either way but I must admit I do get tired if I have to get up at 5:15am more than three days a week.

Starting today, things are going to change and I will be working for home. For four weeks. I am overhauling our policies and procedures and it's just too hard to do that at work. Too many interruptions.

So I'll be working from home.

Sitting at the kitchen table either thinking, typing, talking on the phone or tearing my hair out. My original plan was to either run or swim every morning before work to get the blood moving and fill me with energy for the day. But as I sit here in a brain fog after a long day of sitting, I am beginning to wonder if it makes sense to exercise after work to get the body moving after sitting for 8 hours.

It will be a bit of trial and error but if anyone else out there has a 100% sitting job with limited human contact - I'd appreciate some advice. What do you find the best and most effective time is to exercise?

And when my brain is a little less mushy, I'm going to start thinking about how I can give that poor sucker a good workout too.