Body Love: An exercise update and more about what they learn....

I love coming on here to tell you all how my healthiness journey is going!  I know it's one place where I can go and be perfectly honest without fear of consequences.  So, honesty....I gained a few lbs back over the holidays.  I blame most of it on the trip up north.  We stayed in a hotel with a pool, which was fantastic!  But, for those three days, I didn't work out.  Add to that the days I missed because of holiday events and wonderful germy bugs that my kids and I caught and I only made it to the gym 16 days out of the 31 in December.  Four less than the count from November.  Not too bad, but it definitely gives me room for improvement!  The trip up north also meant lots of eating out.  And eating things that we probably shouldn't.  You see, our favorite restaurant in the entire world is in my hometown.  It's called The Chocolate Moose.  Their specialty is chocolate mousse!  It's an adorable log-style building with bears, fish, moose, and other wilderness paraphernalia scattered around.  There's even a great train that my kids loved pointing out.  The food is phenomenal!  Seriously.  Raspberry Bread Pudding with Whiskey River Sauce!  Vanilla and cinnamon french toast with real maple syrup.  Blueberry pancakes, biscuits with fresh country sausage gravy.  And my absolute favorite, the reason I live to go to that specific restaurant: fresh, lightly battered and seasoned walleye fillets as big as my forearm!  Oh my, their fish is the best!  Listening to all that...it's entirely understandable how the scale suddenly fluctuated upward, right?  All of that left me itching to get back to the gym today.  I'd had three days off and refused to make it a fourth!  I had a little bummer moment when I got there....while I was gone, someone managed to crack the code on my permanent locker.  They broke in and stole the pair of Asics that my husband bought me a couple of months ago.  And helped themselves to my face wash and lotion while they were there.  I'm trying to look on the bright side....they left my brand new Mizunos that my husband gave me for Christmas.  And most of the rest of my stuff was there.  And hey, it's not like I'm going to miss the Asics.  They were awful and gave me blisters on the inside and heals of my feet!  Whoever has them now is more than welcome to the blisters!

Body love....any idea what it is?  If you'd asked me months ago, before all the exercise, what I liked least about my body, I would have had a million answers for you.  My wide rear end.  My flabby arms that continue to wave goodbye long after I've stopped.  My triple chins.  My blubbery knees.  My fat thighs that rub together when I walk.  The list goes on and on!  But now that I've started exercising, those parts are taking on new meaning.  My knees are holding up to all the exercise incredibly well.  They aren't nearly as blubbery and they don't pain me at all.  My arms are slimming down.  My rear end has more muscle to it.  My triple chins have downgraded to double chins.  I'm actually finding it in myself to love my body, just as it is, because of what it's capable of doing!  My body can do more than an hour of hard core exercise!  That's pretty incredible  But there is one major problem.  Remember when I mentioned those eczema patches on my feet?  They're currently flaring up to the point that it begins to feel like someone is holding a lit cigar to my feet while I workout.  It's PAINFUL in the extreme!  And no matter how much I'm marveling at what the rest of my body can do, I'm cursing my feet.  I can't find it in me to love that part of my body right now.  I'm seeing a dermatologist in a few days and I'm praying for a magic cure.  I'm tired of telling my feet to suck it up and deal with it while I work out.  Darn feet!

So, body love....do you ever look in the mirror and wonder at the beauty you see there?  Or, as most people do, do you stand in front of the mirror and pick out the flaws that you see before you?  Most of us just pick out our flaws, right?  We don't spend much time at all focusing on the good things we see.  That's what Body Love is.  It's focusing on what we like about our bodies, not what we don't.  How sad is it that we focus on our flaws and don't take the time to appreciate the beauty we can find in ourselves?  Exercising has helped bring me to a point where I am starting to see more of the beauty and less of the flaws.  So here's why I'm bringing this up....think back to that post I wrote about our kids learning from what they see us doing.  We're fools if we think they don't notice us picking out our flaws in the mirror!  They see it and they catch it all.  They learn it!  This is all part of the life that I was leading that I really do not want my children to lead!  I don't want Lily to look in the mirror and pick out bits and pieces of herself to tear apart.  I don't want her and Leo to be weighted down with insecurities, picking apart their self-worth based on a few physical features that in the end, mean absolutely nothing.  So, one of my goals this year is to look at the beauty.  I need to quit picking at my flaws and open my eyes just a bit wider so I can see the whole of the beautiful picture that is my life!

Okay, gotta lighten things up now since that was such a serious post!  Here....I dare you to look at this picture and keep your lips from turning up at the corners: