Aging disgracefully?

"Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine." -  Mary Schmich as published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997 (not, as urban legend would have it by Kurt Vonnegut for the 1997 MIT graduation ceremony)

How I wish I had listened better to those words when I first heard them in Baz Luhrmann's 'Sunscreen' song in 1998!  But I didn't, and true to those words I do now look back at photos and think "holy shit but you wasted that body girl!". Because lets face it, I'm never going to look like that again following the leap I made into motherhood.  It's not so much the childbirth, or the pregnancy, with time and/or money these can be easily overcome through diet and exercise. 

But without time and money..... well I'm done for!  There is just no way I can work full time, be an adequate mother to a demanding and noisy toddler, almost wife to my man, runner of house, shopper of food, blogger of nonsense, wannabe Master Chef and painter of nails and still find time to do enough exercise to shrink the thighs and mummy tummy.  And I love good food far too much to stop eating - oh how I wish it were that simple!  But I'm afraid I agree with John Mortimer when he said "There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward."  Sigh.

So my make do answer for now is to hurl myself around the living room to various DVD workouts.  I seem to rotate between Davina and some floozy I've do this idea no idea of called Vicky Binns (possibly in Coronation St or something similar?).  Davina does great when I'm short of time, which is lets face it most evenings.  Vicky is the luxury of having an hour and the energy to go through with it.  Davina makes me feel virtuous and I can choose which work out I'm going to do - boxercise if feeling aggressive or pump if worried about the bingo wings. Vicky is tougher, so much tougher that I definitely warrant coffee and cake the following day.

I only manage to do either about 3 times a week, which I realise is only ever going to slow down the getting fatter process, and little to reverse it!  Try as I might the weekends go too fast and I'm too hungover.  Thursday, if I'm lucky enough not to be travelling I'm far too tired.  So I am trying to eat less carbs, and trying to avoid them after 6pm on most days.

My favourite thing of all though is drinking too much white wine on a Friday night and then going mental to this song in the kitchen.  I challenge you not to feel amazing after just looking at this video, never mind inspired to move that butt of yours.

What works for you?  Tell me please how you do it!

In case you're remotely interested, these are the Davina & Vicky Binns DVDs I'm talking about and bought following the best reviews I trawled through.  Not cheap these things so if anyone is interested in swapping and trying out new routines I'm all up for it!