I Make This Look Hard!

Exercise.  A word that I hated for a long time.  It just doesn't sound fun.  It sounds kinda horrible.  But if you want to lose weight and get your butt in shape, it is something necessary.  When I began to lose weight 6 months ago I didn't want to exercise, I wanted to lose weight just by changing my eating.  And for a while that worked.  Steven and I had been taking the girls on nightly walks for a while, so we did continue those and increased them slowly.  I didn't consider that exercise.  To me that was just what we did.  It was something I did for the betterment of my girls.  In June while I was losing weight I began to realize that the weight was not coming off as quickly, and I needed to do something else.  We were walking 1-2 miles a day already, so more walking was just not going to do.

At the end of June I dusted off my Jillian Micheals 30 Day Shred DVD (I bought it back before I was married, our 4th anniversary is this week) and I popped it in player one morning when I couldn't fall back asleep after feeding Brynn.  I was exhausted. I hated it.  The entire time I kept thinking why am I doing this?  How much longer?  But then it was done.  I was tired.  I had to stop several times to catch my breath, but I did it.  And knowing I did it felt good.  It felt really good.  I kinda wanted to do it again.  I was shocked by myself.  A couple days later the same thing I couldn't sleep.  I worked out.  I felt good.  Somehow I even felt like I was getting a little time to myself.  It was the wee hours of the morning, okay it's 5:30, Steven has already left for work,  but the girls are not awake.  It is 2 hours a day when I have time to myself.  So I take 20minutes of it to work out.  And I feel great afterwards.  The 30 Day Shred is intended to be an everyday workout.  I do not do it everyday.  I tried to do it too many times for myself in a week and i ended up with a hurt shoulder.  I learned my lesson.  I now do no more than 2 days in a row without a break day.  This works for me right now, but everyone is different.  If you can do it every day for 30 days, great!  I can't.  And that's okay.

On top of the DVD we had continued to walk daily.  And in July we made a goal to walk 50 miles.  It  sounded like a lot, but as we started to do it, it was easy.  We walked all but 2 days in July.  And we ended up walking about 56 miles.  We were very proud.  Then one day I said something I never in my life thought I would say.  I asked Steven if he would want to start jogging.  Who am I?  Anytime I was in school and I had to run for gym class i hated it.  I never wanted to do it.  I would do anything I had to, just to get out of running.  And now on my own initiative I was asking Steven to start jogging with me.

I rediscovered something I already knew about myself and running.  I am slow.  Not like just a little slow, like horribly slow.  And I cannot go very far.  I cannot run a mile.  I can't even run half a mile yet without stopping.  The first day we added jogging was bad.  It was very bad.  The second time it was a little better, but still not good. We have now jogged several times. I still can't go far.  I am still slow.  But for the first time when we jogged last night I did not feel like I was going to die.  I felt like I could do it.  I was not embarassed that people were seeing me struggle, rather I was thinking about how at least I was doing something to improve myself.  I do not look natural when I run.  I do not look like those people you see that you think oh yeah they are runners.  I make running look hard.  But at least I am doing it.  

I have a goal to be able to run a mile without stopping by the time I get to Indiana.  That is a lofty goal for me right now.  I only have a little over 3 weeks before we get to Indiana and right now the furthest I can go is probably 1/4 mile.  It sounds hard.  But losing 50lbs sounded hard too, and I did that.  So with a little prayer and a lot of training, hopefully I can do it.  So if you see me on the side of the road looking like I am going to die, feel free to give me a little encouragment.  And mention how good my butt looks ;)