Happy in My Body

Way back in March, I wrote a post about how I was motivated to begin exercising. I was feeling the stress of swim suit season upon me and I was wishing my swimsuit covered basically my whole body. In that post, I also stated that I would post a follow up about how I was doing with my exercise routine in "about one month". Well, I haven't forgotten that statement, and although I have procrastinated, I am now going to write this very over-due post. Lets see, when I first set up an exercise group, we determined to jog. We started out at the same time and just went at our own pace. We were all over the place, Kara and I jogged/walked at about the same pace so we stuck together. Loren and Jill set up a healthy walking pace and stayed together as well. Cameron ran circles around all of us. I remember seeing him running across the road in front of us several times and wondering how the heck he was in so many places at once. So this routine lasted for approximately one day. The next morning, Kara was ready when I arrived and then the morning after that, I ended up waking her up. Then the rest of the week, I didn't even bother going over there... I just enjoyed sleeping. I realized quickly that if I was going to get anywhere with my exercising goal, a few things needed to happen. 1. I needed to follow through even if others didn't, 2. I needed to get a pair of headphones that wouldn't fall out of my ears in order to drown out the horrendous sound of my lungs gasping for air and 3. I needed to stop trying to exercise before I was willing to be awake! So, the next week I went at it hard again. I started jogging at night after the kids were in bed. On nights that I either didn't feel like jogging or if Spencer was delivering pizza and not here to be with the kids, I would try to do an exercise DVD. A couple times I jogged over to Kara's and did a DVD with her. We also occasionally ran at the high school. That was really fun. Mostly, I just made sure that I was doing SOMETHING at least 4 nights a week. I'm happy to say that I've stuck very well to my goal since that time (aside from last week in Park City where I tried to jog and nearly fainted with lack of oxygen). I haven't really seen "results" in the way of a slimmer waist or cute arms and thin thighs, but I have earned the following things: I do not get as tired when I jog, I feel stronger, I sleep deeper, and I feel far more confident and grateful for my body. Luckily, these are the things that are most important to me. Our bodies are a fabulous gift from our Heavenly Father. I believe that I should love my body in whatever shape it's in and always be grateful for it. Taking care of it will help me love it as I should. And so, after all these months of working hard to take care of it, and at this time in my life, I can say that I am really pretty happy in my body.