My "Getting In Shape" Journey

    With the encouragement of some dear friends of mine, I have been on the summer road to getting in
shape! Since the summer began, I have gone to the gym with someone almost every day.  During my lunch break at work, my friend and I go do yoga or [ultimately] power walking, another friend and I have gotten up early to go for a run, and another friend and I have shared accountability with each other since our schedules don't always sync.

Junior Year of High School

    In high school, I ran track, I loved marching band, and I was in JROTC - I basically stayed in shape all year long.  I was much smaller than I am now, not by too much, but enough to tell the
difference.  I could last long while running, I enjoyed being outside and doing active things.  Now, I can hardly last a quarter mile on the treadmill without panting!  I have a trouble with self-confidence, and I want to fix a few things because of this.  By fix, I don't mean that there's anything broken about me.  What I have heard from many sources is basically, "If you don't like something, change it."  The thing is, if I change it I might not like it either.  What my goal is to do is become more comfortable with myself, not change myself.  However, I realized that I don't feel comfortable not being able to function fully and feeling not so healthy.  So overall, I want to be more healthy, become more active, and know that I am taking care of the blessing God gave me in having a working body.  I need to take better advantage of what He's given me instead of asking for more or for different.

Senior Year of High School

    I want to share some goals with you and also some worries as I am entrancing this little journey.  Please be in prayer for me!  Even though this journey isn't necessarily huge life change, I know that it will be difficult to keep up and there will be times where I'd rather sit on the couch and blog than go outside and run or something.

Goals

1.  Look Different

     I seem to always have this problem: I can work out and eat healthy for weeks... and I'll gain weight in the process.  So I cannot look at my weight on the scale and depend on seeing that change.  I simply want to look different by the time school starts back.  Not super-skinny, just different, like people can tell that I haven't sat on my derriere all summer.

2.  Eat Healthier

     Frank and I have decided that we will only buy fresh fruits and vegetables and learn how to make new     dishes with them.  We also decided to buy lots of good whole foods instead of processed foods.  This way we can get internally healthy together!  It's not that we didn't eat healthy before, it's that we're going to eat even healthier now.  We usually got some good fresh things, but we were limited because of finances - God has provided though ;)

3.  Rely on God

     This one seems simple, but it's sometimes easy for me to lose track of God and His strength when I try relying on my own strength.  I am nothing without God, and I can't do anything without Him or His restoring strength.  A habit I developed while I ran track in high school was to talk to God the whole time I ran laps during track meets.  It brought me peace and I felt restored even after I finished the race.  I need and want to get back into this habit.

4.  Run My First 10K!

     Yes!  My first 10K!  Again, in high school I ran a lot and ran maybe 4 or 5 5K races outside of band, track and JROTC.  One of those 5K races was the running portion of a triathlon (obviously, I did the running part!)  I may run one more 5K just to prove to myself that I can do it again, but my goal is to sign up for and run a 10K for the first time possibly in October.  I have already started scouting for races!

5.  Keep It Up!

     I want to become so endured throughout the summer that when the school year comes, I don't back down!  I have a fitness plan that I found and sort of personalized that will keep me active for at least 30 minutes a day.  I want to be so in tuned to running regularly again that I won't know what to do with myself if I don't run!

Worries That Will Require Prayer

1.  Discouragement

     As I said before, I can't depend on things like my weight because I can't seem to lose it very easily.  Even as I get thinner and fit into my clothes better, I gain weight.  I blame it on two things: genes and gender.  As a woman, I am naturally designed to have more weight on my body.  In my gene pool, I have some thick German and Scandinavian roots that give me good muscle-building genes.  And that's not always helpful on a scale.  I need prayer that I, first wouldn't look at a scale, but that if I do I am not discouraged  by what I may see.  I get reaaaallllyy discouraged by this, even though I know full well that I have no reason to be!

2.  Balance

     As hard and embarrassing as it is for me to admit.... I had a slight eating disorder in high school.  It can be classified as exercise-bulimia because of the binge-purge cycle I would put myself through.  I would eat very little for lunch, and then run a few miles without eating dinner.  Either that or I would go a day or two without eating, eat a lot of food, and then work out a lot to follow.  I was very fit that year, and I thought I felt good about myself, but God intervened!  Since then I have had a hard time finding balance between working out and eating.  Pray that God gives me that knowledge in this process.  It's okay to eat portion-sized meals while working out, I don't want to get scared of working out in the mindset that I'm hurting my body again.  I just need to find that balance and be at peace with it.

3.  Stress

     Regardless what people say, exercising and eating right doesn't relieve stress for me - once I finish running or eating healthier won't make the problems go away!  Instead, I tend to let myself become overwhelmed with stress.  This stress can come in forms of, "Oh no, I forgot to work out today, should I go tomorrow twice?  I don't think I'll have room for twice... But what if I only work out once? I'll be behind a day!  I don't really want to go now..."  or it could come in form of, "Oh crap... the school year started... and I work.... I am soooo stressed, I don't have time to go run or anything...."  So regardless of what kind of stress it is, I don't want it to overwhelm me, take me away from the routine I'm building, or keep me from my time with God.

I'll regularly update on my progress and how I'm growing!  Please be in prayer for me on this little journey because I definitely cannot do this on my own!  Other than Frank, I have three lovely ladies to stay accountable to that have already been such an encouragement to me!  Please pray for them as well as we are all in the same boat: we want to get in shape and be healthy and we all have different goals!  

PS. The pictures from high school are to simply give an idea of the bit I have changed in look since then.  Like I said, not much, but you can tell a difference ;)  I couldn't find anything from earlier than junior year since I got my facebook right before junior year started.  Junior year was the first year I didn't stress about the disorder I had the two years before then.