We had a scare this year that made us realize that we needed to change, not just for ourselves, but for the sake of our children.
Each day is a gift and not a given right. Leave no stone unturned, leave your fears behind and try to take the path less traveled by. That first step you take is the longest stride.
It was time to get healthy. I wouldn’t say we are on a diet, it’s more of a lifestyle change, a big one for us. In the past six months from the foods we eat to the amount of exercise we are doing has changed dramatically. But we’ve started off slowly.
The first thing we changed was our eating habits. I’m not going to lie, it hasn’t been easy. I have a sweet tooth and Wade loves salty snacks. We didn’t go cold turkey, we started off slowly and cut out the late-night snacks. I also had to get out of my head-space about wasting food and stop finishing up the bowl of mac-n-cheese leftover from one of the kids over the kitchen sink.
We started eating more baked fish, chicken, fresh fruit, and veggies to our diet. By doing this, I’ve noticed in the past six months that my taste buds are changing. Last night, I made spaghetti with zoodles (zucchini noodles) for Wade and I and regular thin spaghetti noodles for kids. I actually preferred the zoodles! The kids even like them! If you’d told me this a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed it and I’m sure the kids would’ve given you the yuck-face. (I added a link for a zoodle maker in case anyone is interested)
The second thing we did was start exercising. We started off by doing something my 20-year-old self would have died before doing. We started mall walking. That’s right, we were mall walkers and would walk two miles doing laps in the mall at least three or four times a week.
When the weather became nicer, we walked outside. About two months ago we decided to up our game and got the C25K (Couch to 5K) app on our phones.
This morning I completed week 7 day 2, which means after a brisk 5-minute walk, I ran/jogged for 25 minutes straight. For those of you that run every day, this probably seems like nothing. But, for us, it was amazing. Not amazing in the sense that we loved running. No. Amazing in the sense that we did it!
When that glorious voice said, “one minute left” Wade, his palms sweaty, knees weak, arms heavy… looked at me and said, “Let’s push ourselves and go to the stop sign.”
Wade, who used to say, “I’ll only run if someone is chasing me,” is pushing me to go even farther than the C25K is saying to go?
I felt tired and weak, and when you feel tired and weak, you feel like you wanna just give up, but you gotta search within you to find that inner strength and just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up, and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.
I thought I would die, but I didn’t. We pushed ourselves and freaking did it! We made it to the stop sign.
You have no idea what you can do until you do it. Go out and smash it, like Oh. My. God. Jump off that sofa, Let’s get get off!
*Lyrics throughout this post are songs from my running playlist. Can you name any of the songs? Leave a comment if you can!
Stories I Tell 