My Journey Part One

We all tend to judge things by successes and failures. But true success is measured by our failures. Let me explain. If someone never fails then that means they never tried. Don't be afraid to fail. A successful person isn't someone who has never failed. They are someone who NEVER GIVES UP!

You might be wondering WHAT "success" I want to talk to you about today. After all, I do run a successful kid care and preschool and have for MANY years. I've been married to the same wonderful man for over thirty-three years. I have given birth to four children and raised two of them to adulthood and the other two are about to embark on that journey, one in a year and the other in three. Those are all things a lot of people would count as successes. I know I do. But those aren't the ones I am here to talk about today.

Today is for a different type of success. One that is just as challenging and rewarding as the ones mentioned above. But this one is a personal journey that is just about ME. This is about my fitness success. Those who know me understand that when I say FITNESS I am talking about more than exercise. Fitness is exercise, diet, our mental fitness and our spiritual fitness. Sometimes those get off balanced and we have one on track but the others fall to the way side. Balance is important when it comes to fitness.

In order to tell you about where I am today on my fitness journey, I need to give you some background on where I started. I was born in the mid 60's. I was not a chubby child, in fact in some of my pictures I look kind of like a stick before hitting puberty. I was an extremely active little girl. I was always outside running around, riding my bike, climbing trees or playing on the swing set. In the summer I was ALWAYS at the public pool. My grandparents spent a lot of time on the golf course so I was doing that, too. I've looked back to try to figure out when that changed and why. It may have been because school got more involved and harder. It could be because I spent more time watching TV. It may have been because puberty changed my attitude and I just got lazy. We were required to do sports and PE in school instead of recess and that may have made it seem less "fun". I'm not sure what the commercials were back then but they COULD have been the beginning on the body image issues that plague us still today.

I grew up in a time that the new aerobic fade came around. Fitness Centers for women were popping up in the late 70's in our small city.. I don't know if women always worried about their weight or if it didn't matter as much because they worked hard around their homes to take care of their families and didn't have time to think about it. But I remember that my grandmother was unhappy with her size 14 clothes and struggled to lose any weight until she got in her mid 70's and 80's and the weight just wouldn't stay on her body. I was not a thin girl after I reached puberty but I wasn't really big, either. But I FELT like I was. It bothered me that I wasn't as small as I "thought" I should be. I can tell you right now that those thoughts were very harmful to my self worth and it has caused me many challenges over my lifetime. I don't remember if I had other people say things to me about weight or if I saw things in movies, TV shows or read it in books. But somewhere, somehow, I got the idea that I was FAT. But when I look back at pictures of myself during those years...I was NOT fat. I was NOT overweight. I was NOT unattractive. I have read my old diaries from my teen years and I was dieting and trying to lose weight ALL.THE.TIME. The more weight I put on the more diets I tried. I lived a yo-yo life with my weight.

My journey just got harder and more complicated as I got out of high school and got married followed by children. Check back for Part Two of the story.

Helping Transform Lives One Day At A Time