There's something about the intense cold of winter that seems to inspire me to get outside and walk. At insane hours of the morning. Like, before the sun actually comes up. Like, it's still dark when I come back from my walk!

Last winter, I thought about how badly I wanted to reestablish my morning walk with the dog. Usually, it was when I had been sitting at my desk for a long stretch staring at a computer screen. My legs would alternate bouncing up and down like what? And I would start to notice that I felt like sludge because of all the crap I had eaten all day. That's when I would think, "Gee, a walk sure would be good; I think I'll start tomorrow."

Only, when I got into bed on those cold nights and was making sure my alarm was set, 5:20 a.m. seemed awfully early. And when I thought about how hard it was to force myself out of bed at 6:30 a.m. that morning, I wondered how committed I'd be to getting out of bed for a walk an hour earlier. So I resigned myself to not walking. Again. Because the thought of sleep felt so much better in that moment than how I imagined I'd feel after a brisk walk.

But then, in the middle of the day when my eyes are fighting me to close and it's tough to get up and walk across the room, I think about how much better I will likely feel if I could just start that daily exercise routine, how much sharper my mind will be throughout the day, how much more likely I will be to check my blood sugar and to eat right and to stop running down this path of destruction.

Monday morning I say, I'll start tomorrow because Monday is just not the right day to start a new walking effort; and then Monday night I stay up too late to get up on Tuesday for a walk. On Tuesday I say I'll start tomorrow and then go to bed early to catch up on the sleep I missed the night before. On Thursday I think I'm ready to start on Friday, and then decide that by Saturday I won't have my groove anymore and won't be motivated so why should I start something on Friday that I might or might not be able to convince myself to keep up through the weekend. So I decide to go on Monday.