Step 2: Committed to Exercise

In my last post I covered step 1 of the 10 steps I took to get to where I am today. In this post, will cover step 2. I committed to exercise. Soooo….what did I do you say? Well, let me tell you, I did pretty much every sort of exercise and sport I could think of until I found one I fell in love with! At my heaviest I was 190. I did start loosing weight with lifestyle changes, but I needed SOMETHING. I knew I wanted to not just be skinny, I wanted to be fit! But I didn’t know how to do that!

First, I started using the elliptical I had purchased a couple years before. The first day my chunky body got on it, my too smart for it’s own good elliptical kicked me off after 5 minutes when it determined my heart rate was going too high. SO I tried again and again and again until I worked up to 45 minutes. I would wake up at 5am and hop on it. I enjoyed this…for a while. Then getting up early started wearing on me as I was nursing a baby. So I started planting him in his car seat right next to me, and the other kids in front of the TV while I hopped on the elliptical later in the day. It started getting boring. I started watching episodes of Grays Anatomy while on it….but is was still getting boring.

So then I decided to train for Warrior Dash. I would run up and down the hills near my mountain coffee shop….pushing a jogging stroller. I made myself run before I let myself get my morning coffee. I…..HATED….RUNNING!!!! Ahhhhhh!!! But I didn’t quit because I was training for a race! All my coffee shop friends would sit there sipping coffee, watching me run in my misery. Then race day came….traffic to get to the race was backed up and we waited hours. I was starving when I got in and ate a chicken sandwich….AAAAAND I got sick. I ran the entire race feeling like I needed to puke, climbing obstacles, crawling through mud…all while feeling like I could hurl at any moment. But I finished!

In this time frame I also tried equestrian vaulting, my kids sport. What is this, you ask? Well, its gymnastics and dance on a moving horse….WHAAAAAA???? Yes, you heard that right! I did this for a couple years, and I even competed. I remember just barely learning to stand on the horse a week before my competition….I looked like I saw a ghost the whole time I was in the arena. But I did enjoy it, and I will definitely do it again!

Then I tried P90X. This is a good program, it got me on my way to doing my first pull up, but the videos are long, and there are so many push ups, and pull ups, and push ups, and pull ups. I did start building some muscle though! What I didn’t like about this was dedicating myself to that much time in front of the TV in my own house. Something was missing. So I went back to my elliptical and actually started loosing muscle.

I had lifted weights in college, and found a community center gym near my house so I decided to take on weight lifting. My good friend came with me to get me started. I loved it! I was only squatting the bar, benching the bar, and didn’t even know what a deadlift was. I was very very weak. I had lost tons of weight but I was weak……I chronically cardio’d all my muscle away. But I kept going, and my friend kept helping me.

One day, as a nice treat, he took me to his gym, Liberty Gym. I walked in and it was like the the sky opened up with glorious light and I could almost hear angels singing….or maybe it was just the skylights and music playing, but I felt like I had come home!!! It’s hard to explain how amazing it felt to walk into a real lifting gym. I paid day fees for about a month before I was hooked and made the switch. Things were about to get serious! I went from 3 days a week to 4 days a week to 5 days a week to my current 6 days a week. About a year into this I watched my first powerlifting meet….and the rest is history!

I have since dedicated 6 days a week faithfully to my training. I don’t need motivation to work out any more because I found what I love, but as you can see it took a lot of searching. Even when I travel, I get day passes to gyms wherever I am going. I never stop, I always find time for it, not matter what. You may not like lifting, you may like to run, to swim, to climb, to skate…..whatever it is find it!

I am going to end this with a story about what happened to me last Friday. I got some terrible news that is going to impact my family and make life so much harder. I went to the gym right after that meeting. As my workout partner set up the deadlift bar, I, for the first time ever, felt like I couldn’t lift. I got an overwhelming panic from deep inside me. I walked away and handed my keys to some random person, asking him to give them to my partner, and I walked out of the gym. I walked towards a strip mall and I had a full on panic attack….I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t think. My workout partner found me after a bit and talked me through it. We went home….but all I could think was that I let that bad situation take me from what I love, my lifting. So I got myself together and I went back to the gym later that night and did my deadlifts. I couldn’t let the crappy things that happen in life win….you must commit to exercise! Life happens, bad things happen. We can’t let those bad things interfere, we must keep going! So lift your sad head up off that bar and get under it….that is where your body, mind and soul wants to be.