RouletteWeekend

If you workout, you’ve maybe had a favorite trainer at some point. I have been doing at home workouts on the same platform for over 3 years and over the years, I’ve used lots of online trainers. There are a couple that I really like and one who I would consider to be life changing.

Last month, he announced that he was personally going to be doing all of his workouts in a specific order (211 to be exact) and would be hosting a group if anyone wanted to join.

Of course I jumped on that opportunity. Over the last year, I’ve been focused on doing just about every new program that has come out on our platform. The focus has been block periodization where you work hard for 3 weeks and then calm it down for the fourth week. During the fourth week, you are encouraged to visit the mindset masterclass section of the app to work on your mental health.

After all, if your head is not in the game, life can be so much more difficult.

So today is day 3 of 211. I’ve been playing around with the idea of creating some sort of tracker to hang on the wall. Each program has its own tracker so I don’t really need to reinvent the wheel if I don’t want to. Time will tell on that.

October 1st was a form check test and then yesterday was the first workout day, which worked out really well because I really like starting a new program on a Monday. I think it’s because over the last year, all of our programs start on the first Monday of each month so my brain has just expected it. I should probably get it out of my head now, because this first program is 13 weeks long so it will be a while before a new start.

Yesterday was lower body day. Needless to say, today the front of my legs are still feeling it and I have a reminder with each step that I do have a butt back there despite it being shaped very much like a pancake.

I haven’t blogged in a while. So I thought why not get started with this new journey to healthy.

I’ve been thinking alot about longevity lately. I may have written about it or maybe I just intended to. Either way, my oldest daughter just turned 30. I’ll be 48 next week. You can do the math. I’m not much older than her or my boys and the older I get, the more I want to stay young and vibrant. Not in my looks so much. I am enjoying watching the gray hair come in one at a time and I have no plans of covering it up with a coat of brown. If anything, I’d end up with purple hair one day. But it’s not my looks I worry about. I spend, what I consider to be, an unhealthy amount of time worrying about the what ifs of getting older. “What if I lose my mind?” “What if I can’t travel because I’m too sickly?” “What if I fall and break a hip?” “What if I end up never being able to leave my house because of….insert all the reasons here?”

When I was younger, I spent a lot of time worrying about what would happen to my kids if I were to die before they were 18. That did not happen. They all made it to 18 and I’m still around.

But when I started to worry that I might not be around or feel good enough to celebrate my kids’ life experiences and triumphs with them, I realized that I needed to do something preventative.

If you know me, you know that I’m not one for quick fixes. I grew up with family members who wanted to quick fix their way out of life and it never worked. Sometimes I think that pushed me to ALWAYS do things the hard way.

As I’ve aged, though, I’ve found a little bit of balance. I don’t want to do things the hard way, but I will do the hard work to do things the right way. And I learned that getting healthy has no easy route. It’s all about changing your relationships. Changing your relationships with food, with exercise, with yourself and with others. Your mental health is connected to everything else in your life. And when you can honestly look at who you are spending your time with and honestly assess if it is good for you and take the necessary steps of distancing yourself when it’s not, you are a lot more likely to find people who are going to be good for you and supportive of you and it will help you to focus on the areas of your life that you want to work on. Like learning how to love yourself… or just like yourself a little more.

Am I convinced that I still won’t walk out of the house and be hit by a bus tomorrow? Not yet. But I am convinced that, as of right now, I am doing the best I can to become the healthiest version of myself so that I can enjoy my kids and my life for a really long time.

Here’s to the long game, may we navigate its twists and turns with resilience, wisdom, and unwavering determination, for it’s the journey that molds us into the architects of our destiny.