Time to get rid of yearly excuses

This is my yearly column on exercise excuses, and boy have there been a lot of them: snow, rain, wind, broken trees, power outages, mud and dust. Doesn't give you much of an incentive to jog, does it?

Jogging keeps the weight off, but a broken ankle or congested lungs counters the benefits of sweating. You can use any of these exercise excuses for a while, but the time will come when things dry out, warm up and dust off, and then you'll have to think up some new ones.

So, how did 2006 stack up? Did you firm up behind and whittle down in front? Are you still exercising, or did your commitment to sweat die out along with the Christmas wrappings?

Don't feel bad; no one is ecstatic about dieting or sweating. It's such an inconvenience, and once you start. you need to keep it up forever - at least that's the theory. A whole lot of new fitness students who begin to sweat in January will be gone by March. Maybe the trick is to skip March.

What are your exercise excuses: no money? No time? No baby sitter? No energy? No shoes? It's too cold, too dark and too windy?

• If I lose fat, I'll be cold. (Trading 30 pounds of fat for a sweatshirt sounds like a good deal to me.)

• It's too much work. (This excuse belongs to the crowd who would like to take a fatness pill and wash it down with beer.)

• If I stay overweight, and I get sick, then I'll get well faster because of the extra fat. (I have a little trouble with the logic in this one.)

I'll bet it's just plain, "No desire." So let's look for a little desire. What you need is a goal!

Less weight would be one goal you could shoot for. How about less "jiggle?" Less stress is another good goal. And maybe you could try to give up smoking.

Endurance comes with any form of exercise you try, and that's a wonderful goal. You'll have better lung capacity and a healthy heart, another great goal to shoot for.

If you are one of those people who turned 50 last year, you will face the next 50 years much happier if your health is good. And exercise is the place to start, even if your socks don't match, even if you have never exercised a day in your life, and even if it has been 20 years since you lifted a hand weight.

There is always hope. This is bound to be a good fitness year, and you can work your brain thinking up new exercise excuses while you put new energy into last year's body.

• Jerry Vance is the owner of Sweat Shop/Wet Sweat. She offers classes through the Carson City Recreation and Aquatics Center and is a fitness instructor for the Carson City Senior Citizens Center.