Fit, Fabulous, and Forty…Something!

Just put one foot in front of the other…There comes a time in every woman’s life, where she finds herself at a crossroads. A place of making a decision between forgetting her worth and letting herself go or saving herself from herself and showing the world. Just. Who. She. Is. Over the course of the past few months, I have found myself in such a place.
For far too many years, I have let myself go. I have battled depression, anxiety, failed relationships, trying to go to back to college full time while working a full-time job. We have all been there, that place where life has us pulled in so many directions, and nothing seems to be going right. I’ve eaten out of pity, I’ve eaten through the tears, I’ve gotten frustrated and angry with myself for trying to eat away my pain, and then eaten more because I was depressed because I had done so. It is a vicious cycle, and it is all to easy to fall in to.
The important thing is to learn to not beat yourself up for those moments of weakness, they say. Yet, when we give in and do such damaging things to our bodies and, ultimately, our already fragile self-esteems, it is all but impossible not to shame ourselves for such behaviors. Especially, when we know better. Yet, here I am, about a hundred pounds overweight.
Over the past couple of years, however, my life has changed in a very drastic way. I met someone, much younger, but very special to me. Despite my sense of practicality and the well-meant advice of many friends and family, I took a chance on dating him. I thought I would just see where it would go, and if it was not meant to be, I would just let it play out, knowing for a brief moment, I went after life with reckless abandon and enjoyed every moment I had been given. Ironically, to date, things have not played out. They are amazing, in fact. We have gotten married and are planning to move to Florida soon and start a new life, living it up in the Gulf of Mexico.
During the beginning of our relationship, things were great for my fitness goals of getting back into shape and dropping all of that depressed weight I had been carrying around. We went hiking often, we joined a gym together, and we were at the lake often. We were very active and wide open. It was fantastic, we were both getting in very good shape, over all. Then he was moved to second shift on his job. I still tried to work out and walk when I was home by myself at nights. That lasted a little while and was going great. Until he convinced me to go back to school while he was gone at night, I would have plenty of time to work on my assignments. He was right. I did not take into account, however, that after a twelve to fourteen-hour day at my job, I would be coming home at night and spending another three to four hours trying to get my assignments completed. And, just like that, working out went right out the window. He has since gone back to day shift, and we had decided to get back into hiking. Only, we found out really fast, that it has been far too long since we were that active with our marathon hiking weekends, and we were almost dead after a couple of less than five-mile hikes. Aside from that amazing husband of mine, I have two very incredible granddaughters. One is only about to turn a year old soon, and the other is almost four. I enjoy being with them so much, but they are very mobile and quite active now. After a few hours with them, I find myself needing a three-hour nap. And that has become more motivation for getting back active.
I have often heard it said that age is just a number. I have seen people in their seventies who are in prime shape and phenomenal active condition, and I have seen people in their thirties who can barely walk up a flight of stairs. So, I suppose it is true that it is never too late to start. I have decided to challenge myself to a hundred days of working out. Today was day one, and I got up before four a.m. to go to the gym. I did not do a very good job of getting anything laid out and ready last night and spent almost a half hour looking for everything to get ready. Therefore, I only had about an hour of time available for the gym before I had to get home and start getting ready for my day. But hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? And they say, the journey of a thousand miles, begins with one step. An hour of something is better than a day of nothing. I feel good after accomplishing that. It is hard to want to get up before four a.m. and it is even harder to jump out of bed and jet off to the gym. I know many people do this on a daily basis, and I truly admire them!
More than just getting fit, this journey I have committed to, is about living a fabulous life. I have a wonderful husband, a beautiful family, and a great future to look forward to in a quaint little beach town. Why not grab life by the horns and make the most of it all? They say now that forty is the new twenty, so why not rock those forties, and be fabulous? That is what I am aiming for. This one-hundred-day journey will take me far beyond just working to reach my fitness goals, but also losing the metaphoric weight of past regrets and failures. Depression and anxiety are real life problems that we all go through from time to time, but there is no hard and fast rule that say they have to define you, or control what you are capable. It is time to show the world. Just. Who. I. Am. Day one of one hundred, out.