I am trying to find an hour. It’s harder than you think.
I am hunting under the couch – where I am often collapsed, tapping at my laptop or with my eyes glued to the television – searching for the 45 minutes a day I need to reclaim my sanity.
And I just can’t find it. Between my two small children, my job, my partner and the occasional rushed drink with people who were my friends in a quieter age, there isn’t TIME.
More on Holly’s day: “A comprehensive list of the things I did before 9am.”
The time I’m looking for is the time to exercise.
Deep down, I know where that time is. Jodi Meares has got it. Because while I’m struggling to find a lousy 45 minutes, Jodhi is exercising for at least four hours a day. Every day.
And it shows. Jodhi Meares is the impossibly slender and effortlessly glamorous founder of The Upside, a sportswear brand that is so fabulous that there’s no way I would ever dare sweat into their exquisite yoga pants.
Because, in all seriousness, there ain’t no way you put a spin-class crotch anywhere near this:
Jodhi revealed how she makes time in her day for exercise in a story with Harper’s Bazaar earlier this year entitled ’24 hours with Jodhi Meares’.
And reading it, I can see exactly where I’m going wrong.
She gets up at 5am, every day.
Jodhi: I like to rise with the sun — there’s a certain sanity which comes with getting up at first light.
And then she spends an hour walking to her first yoga class.
An hour in the yoga class, and then an hour walking back.
Jodhi: I’m like Forrest Gump — I walk as much as I can.
I like to wake up early, too. And I usually manage it, because I often have a small child balancing on my head, sometimes whispering in my ear, sometimes yelling, “Mum, mum, mum, mum, mum. Is it time to get up? Is time to get up? Is it time to get up?”
It’s like my own personal mantra.
And then, when I should be stretching and pulling on my workout gear and heading out the door for my hour-long walk to my hour-long workout, I selfishly find myself making school lunches, listening to the news, and trying to find clean clothes that aren’t completely concertinaed at the bottom of the washing basket.
Then it’s breakfast, for them, and out of the door in time to catch my bus (BUS! So lazy, so decadent), to my office, where I eat Vegemite toast.
Jodhi: Before I leave home, one of the first things I always do is drink warm water and lemon… There’s no time to eat — and I could never do yoga on a full stomach anyway.
I have hot water, too, but it has a lot of coffee in it, and a tiny bit of milk. And then I work, pretty much all day without so much as a walking meeting, until around 6pm or so.
Jodhi: Instead of doing conference meetings or coffee meetings, I ask people to do walking meetings…. I can only cope with about five or six hours cooped up in an office, so sometimes I’ll try and make a 6pm yoga class, heading straight there from work.
Another yoga class?
I’ve just spent a pretty long day sitting on my arse, which isn’t good (my arse, or the sitting all day), until it’s time to travel home on the bus (why aren’t I walking, where’s my inner Forrest?) to make two lots of dinner, get my kids in the bath, into their pyjamas, read two lots of bedtime books (that’s about six books in total, and none of them are improving or Zen), get them into bed and back into bed and back into bed until finally they stay there and I can look at my other half and say… “Hey. How was your day?”
Meanwhile…
Jodhi: In summer I’ll often finish the day with a swim at one of Sydney’s harbour beaches.
Back at home I’ll run an Epsom salt bath and jump in with a cup of tea… but I’m normally in bed by 10.
I’ve got three wardrobes and am building another one in my guest room.
One is purely devoted to shoes.
When I finally go to bed around 11pm, having managed a few snatched conversations with my partner, folded 25 baskets of washing, done some work, watched Game Of Thrones, wolfed down some dinner, tried to tidy the house – I can barely find my pillow beneath the piles of washing that I still haven’t folded and put away in my one, chaotic wardrobe. How is it possible for one family of four to have so much washing?
It’s hard to know.
But I do know that I need to channel my inner Jodhi and get some more zen in my life. Some more yoga-pants wearing, street-pounding, two workouts a day, lemon-in-hot-water drinking zen is exactly what my life needs.
Jodhi, I can’t find an hour to exercise. Can I borrow one of yours?
How do you make time to exercise?
Inspirational moments from Jodhi’s Instagram:
Keep reading:
Jodhi Meares calls out liars in a pointed Instagram post.
The one thing that successful women do every morning.
We all had a role to play in what happened to Jodhi Meares on Saturday night.
Top Comments
sahm mum, to a kindy and a year 1 child. I try to plan. last year for a whole term I wrote "walk " on the family calendar days a week, and you'll be surprised how you will work around it and make it happen! I also make sure i don't over commit to anything eash week, that includes school meetings, kindy help, canteen help, grocery shopping, babysitting, cooking for family (we've a few elder sick members who love a soup or batch of scones/cupcakes brought over) so that i can have a walk (either outside or on MIL's treadmill) or if I am going to playground with kids I try to exercise there.
The tone of this article does not sit well with me. If you are looking for suggestions about finding time for exercise from other Mums or someone leading a similar life to your own, why not just ask? Why the need to mock another woman who lives a life that is almost as opposite to your own as can be simply because she tackles her day in a way that is different to yours? I thought this site was meant to celebrate women and their stories in all of their many and varied forms, not to one-up each other on who has the least time and who is more exhausted by their kids.
Since it seems like this is what you were asking, I am a member of a gym with a crèche that caters for kids from 6 weeks to 12 years. My daughter goes to the crèche while I go to a class. At work, I try to stand instead of sit while I answer emails or take calls and if I can get out of the office for lunch I try to go to the gym or a quick walk. I squeeze in things like squats or a bit of yoga around the house and go for as much incidental excercise as possible, even just getting off the bus a stop or two early. Not that it matters, but I am a single mum working and studying so I understand where you are coming from in terms of having little free time, but I force myself to find the time for my health.