Left unattended, excess weight, like dirty clothes tends to pile up

My house is a mess. The kind of insurmountable mess that makes you want to go back to bed. I have piles of papers, laundry (clean and dirty), dishes, shoes, coats, backpacks, toys, recyclables, and kids. I caught myself thinking over the weekend that all I needed to do was hire someone to clean the mess, to give me a clean slate. And then I laughed out loud. Because I have had someone clean up after us for years and years and my house always returns to the same messy state. Then it hit me. keeping your house clean is like being fit. You have to work at it everyday or you lose it. I have clients tell me if only they were at their goal weight, they could maintain it. To which I always say, "I would give you my body but you would ruin it". Just like cleaning your house, being fit is not a steady state. As soon as you sit back and start to admire the results of your hard work, the mess or the extra weight starts piling up again.

If you are reading this, the odds are you are super neat. I'm sure you would never dream of leaving the house with an unmade bed or a dish in the sink. It is likely I have tried to convince you that the dishes will still be there when you get back from exercising (mine always are!). But you are so busy cleaning you have no time to exercise and I am so busy exercising, I never get to clean. In both cases, what started out as a little problem is now a big one. For me, given the choice between exercising and cleaning my house, exercise will win every time.

As we all know, excess weight has a tendency to creep up on you and by the time you realize how out of shape you are, getting back into shape seems impossibly hard. I may always be a slob. And you may never be a marathon runner. But just maybe we can meet in the middle. Before I go running today, I vow to put away all the laundry. Before you put away the laundry, do you think you could squeeze a run in? And to those of you who have already figured out how to find time to exercise and keep your house clean, well knowing you are out there, gives hope to the rest of us.