Soap Box

So here it comes: My rant.

This is going to be a series of rants.

I had to go to the gym late tonight. I didn't even start lifting weights until 8:15. I was up first thing this morning, and was busy all day right up until I got into the Idaho Athletic Club at about 8 o clock. I am just a normal mom, I don't work outside of my home. I have a lot of things I must accomplish each day on top of loving up my husband and two children. While I take that work very seriously, I also take the time that I must set aside for myself very seriously as well. I prioritize things that aren't related to my family or my workouts very strictly. Things come up, parties, or social events that sometimes go by the way side because they don't line up with these things that my family and I have deemed more important. That being said, the time that I take for myself to exercise is as important of an activity to me as brushing my teeth, or showering, or reading to my daughter or feeding my son, or cooking dinner for my husband. This means that it takes time, planning, with some flexibility on all of our parts to accomplish these things.

I was talking to a friend today. She is a wife and a mother of 3 young children, she works full time from early morning to early afternoon each week. She had a baby the same time I did and she looks FANTASTIC! I sort of short changed her and told her she was lucky. She, however, like me is working her little butt off to get back in shape. She said she runs on her treadmill everyday 2 or 3 miles, and has been adding things gradually to her workouts like burpies, pushups, situps and other things. LISTEN TO ME VERY CAREFULLY, if she can find time to workout for an hour everyday, I venture to say EVERYONE can find the time to workout everyday. She is still waking up with her baby in the night, her mornings start I think at 4:30 most days. She has made fitness a priority in her life and because of that, (maybe she has a thin build as well), she is getting back into shape and is well on her way to herself again.

My point is. Exercise is work. Eating right is work. Sometimes it is annoying work that we don't want to do, but when we choose to do it anyway, we choose to live a healthier life. I think that by doing things the natural, sometimes the harder way, of exercising and eating right we earn bragging rights!!! We are kicking our own butts, we are pushing ourselves to our own limits, we are losing weight, losing inches, clearing our minds, and making our body's healthy and we are doing it without a diet pill, with out a HCG shot, without someone preparing our meals. We are pushing ourselves! And we deserve to be proud of that.

It would be easy to wake up tomorow and sit on the couch and watch tv all day. It would be easy to grab whatever food I see, and throw it in my mouth. It would be easy to never think a thing about what I eat or what exercise I am going to do again. But I know my life wouldn't feel easier.

I would feel heavy, (literally and figuratively) I would feel tired, I would feel insecure about the way I looked, and I would not be proud of the example I was setting for my children.

Eating healthy foods, and getting in daily exercise is not a Pound Pinching thing, not a Biggest Loser thing, not a Weight Watcher thing, it is a lifestyle, it is an attitude. For me it is the confidence in who I am, it is knowing that I deserve to be taken care of, that I deserve to live a healthy lifestyle I can be proud of.