Start with why you want to be fit and healthy

On an every day basis, we are often bombarded with images of perfectly shaped women, selling promises of a beautiful body in exchange for buying their product. I know, it’s what sells, and everybody loves buying, but for a regular food-loving woman with a metabolic disadvantage like me, seeing bodies of women who were already born with figure cards stacked in their favor can be downright depressing.

I know no matter how hard I try, I can never be as young, flexible, and as strong as the demi-goddesses of fitness. I say this with a serving of reality, because youth and time are commodities that cannot be replenished. I can’t turn the clock two decades back, and suddenly become the fittest woman on earth. I can’t push as hard, nor recover as fast as my 18 year old self. Even if Jesus powered my cells, I wouldn’t be allowed to compete with women half my age.

Moreover, genetics is a real thing. If I was designed to be a pro-athlete, it would have happened a long time ago. I would have somersaulted and done back flips as a kid. I would have been able to touch my toes. I would have won sport events that I tried very hard at doing. I never did. I was a sick, plump child with lots of respiratory ailments. I could never do splits like my classmate Alice, nor run as fast as friend Mona. I was always plump, even when I didn’t eat.

All my life I’ve struggled with my weight. My tiny Asian girlfriends delighted in striving for under 100 lbs, while I’ve never weighed lighter than 150 lbs from the time I was 14 years old. It didn’t matter if I had chicken pox, measles, or follicular tonsilitis. It didn’t matter if I went vegan, did keto, or ran 10k every day for two years. It didn’t matter that I did detoxes, or cut calories.

I would screw my body up, drive my white blood cells up, iron levels down, and pass out on floors from undereating, but I could never go lighter than 150 lbs. Never.

I eventually found out why in 2010. Three diagnoses later, I learned that I have a hormonal disorder that makes it near impossible for me to lose weight. Is is the reason why I couldn’t do anything to shed the weight since I was a child, and wait for it, there’s no cure. I have lived with it since childhood, and will live with it for the rest of my life. So they say.

So why would someone with a broken body sign up to do the hardest and most challenging workout program in the world, at my age?

I’ll tell you WHY.

Because I AM STILL ALIVE!

I am not so sick or so old that my body cannot be trained to move in ways that expand my life. Even if I can never be a Size 4, I don’t care. I’m done with making the excuse that nothing ever works. I may never be a viking warrior woman, but I can be the best version of me.

There’s still so much I can do to serve God, and if I can improve my physical fitness to serve Him better, that’s all that matters.

The LORD is my strength and my song; he has given me victory. This is my God, and I will praise him–my father’s God, and I will exalt him!

I am not trying to be the next Katrin Davidsdottir, I don’t have Viking genes. Nor am I trying to engineer a body that people will salivate just by looking at it… well… one can still dream!

I am working out to be the best me. I’m training my mind and body to be strong, so that I can be strong for others. I am doing this so that I can manage my condition, and overcome what might happen if I were to do nothing at all. I am doing this to thrive in my own capacity. I’m doing this for God, for me, my family, and my community.

Slowtard is better than nevertard. N’est-ce pas?

I can always be healthier and fitter than yesterday. That’s all I aim for.

So the question is, why do you want to be fit and healthy?

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