Fit as Fiddles, available at: ForYourMarriage.org


Happily Even After

Fit as Fiddles

By Josh Noem


July 6, 2010

We both have become acutely aware in the past few years that we do not have the bodies we had when we were first married.

My metabolism is slowing down and we have a lifestyle that goes with having a family—I can’t just up and go out for a kayaking trip or a day-long hike up Mt. Hood.  Additionally we have an office job that includes a lot of sitting.  It has all added up to 20-30 extra pounds.

It is not like we’ve been bumps on a log, though. I play more than an hour of basketball in a regular pickup game at the parish and I box with friends when I can. Stacey jogs regularly and enjoys yoga in addition to basketball.

All in all, though, we’ve just not been losing the weight we know we should.

We’ve been watching The Biggest Loser on TV and so for Christmas, I gave Stacey the Wii fitness game that is based on the show.

I know that in general, it is pretty dangerous territory for a husband to directly or inadvertently refer to anything sounding like a comment about his wife’s weight, but we’ve always been open about what we’re noticing about our bodies.

One of the things I love most about marriage is its physicality. When all is said and done, the marital experience is fundamentally physical. Not just with sex, but also with sleeping and eating habits, sharing bathroom space while I shave and she dries her hair, washing kids before bedtime… Our bodies are essential ways we experience relationship with each other in marriage and family life.

We’ve been at this new fitness kick for about four months now. I’m down 20 lbs and Stacey is losing weight at about the same pace, so that is gratifying. We’re both losing a pound or two a week, which is good.

We’re starting to have fun with our younger bodies. It feels good to fit into clothes with room to spare, and we have more energy. I think I have literally added six inches to my basketball game. Not that I could ever jump, but it has been fun to make it up and down the floor without losing wind and to have an extra spring in my step for rebounds and defense.

The biggest help from the Wii game has been a calorie diary. Once a day, I enter the amount of calories I consumed. I’ve never counted calories before, but it has certainly helped me think twice about what I put in my mouth throughout the day. It has trained me to have good eating habits.

Another help has come in the form of exercise routines that I can do in our living room in the evening. So when Stacey is on campus for a student meeting, and the kids are in bed, I can get a good 30-60 minute workout in before settling in for the night.

We’ve even been able to do those workouts together, which is also fun, at least when we’re not cursing the cyber trainers.

It has been a big help that we are on the same page together—we are both committed to seeing progress towards our goals. When we sketch out our days together, we both figure in when we each will be able to fit in a workout. Sometimes it means just one of us getting kids out the door in the morning, or going through the bath and bedtime routine solo, but this is not a long-term state of affairs.

We’ve been encouraging one another and helping one another make good choices. It is a long haul, but we’re being consistent and it seems to be paying off so far.

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Comings and Goings

Comings and Goings

Stacey and I just this week sat back after dinner and took a deep breath and enjoyed a glass of wine. May was a busy month. Stacey had a lot of end-of-the-year events for the university, and we had a number of great visits from family and friends. It turned out to be a month of dinners and parties, which was a lot of fun. It was also tiring. We are ready for June, which is a pretty open page on the calendar. The kids get out of school this week, so we’ll take our first tired step into summer, ready to relax and have a few weeks without something special happening. We became members of a local outdoor pool and are ready for the temperatures to get a little warmer so we can spend some evenings there without watching a clock. The many comings and goings have been making me think of the two Catholic feast days that fell in the past week. Last Friday, May 31, marked the Visitation, when we recall the journey of Mary to visit her cousin, Elizabeth. Then, June 7th marks the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In both cases, I see a rhythm of coming and going. The Visitation is obviously about journeying out to encounter another, but the image of the Sacred Heart also reminds me of the rhythm of movement in the heart. With each heartbeat, blood enters and exits the heart to nourish the rest of the body. A professor of mine once likened the Mass to a heart beating. In the Mass, he said, we are drawn into the church building and the mystery of the Eucharist, where we are fed with Christ’s body, and then propelled out to nourish the world. So it is with Jesus’ love for us—he draws us into communion, but at the same time propels us out to share that love with others. Our house has resembled a heart this past month. I imagine a surveillance tape of our front door from the past 30 days played in fast-forward—people coming in and going out, arriving and departing with hugs and waves. I see the walls of our house start to contract and expand to the rhythm. I think about how we’ve been nourished in the past month with the many visitors who have graced our threshold. People have come and gone, and their time with our family is marked by joy and communion. We had one hell of a margarita party over Memorial Day weekend, for example—piñata and all. This is what we’ve always wanted for our marriage and family life. Stacey and I envision our marriage as a taste of heaven. We often enough fall short of that, but at the same time, we certainly get to experience something profoundly sacred in quiet moments throughout a given week within our family. It is a lot of fun to share some of that feast with others, especially with people we love so dearly. The gratuitous blessing in it all, of course, is how much fun it is. There are a lot of sheets and towels to wash, but it has been a graced role to play the part of Elizabeth this past month—our spirits leaping for joy that God should visit us in the faces of such wonderful people.          


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