Why Do You Exercise?

Fitness is necessary for our mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and environmental well being. As an "order aficionado" it has become apparent to me over the years of helping people get through their material junk and give it some order, that if you have clutter in any of these areas of your being or life, you simply cannot function at your optimal.

Today, I am specifically pointing at physical fitness. Here is the question:

If you did not get any obvious visible result from exercising at least 3 days per week for a year, but you have "fitness"; that makes you feel better mentally, emotionally etc, will you keep it up?

I only pose the question because I believe we must have perspective and solid motives to accomplish GREAT things. I know for a fact that when I was young and training everyday as a college athlete that I never considered my health for one second. My motive was results and vanity. Truly! That's it. Then in my late twenties to mid thirties I started to consider a new perspective, a healthier motive for my drive to exercise.

After four kids in 4 years and 7 months I will never be my former size or have the waist of a child. Yes, it's like 14 inches bigger than it was 13 years ago. That's like a whole person added to my waistline, but I am healthier and more soundly fit than ever in my life. I can honestly say I have been working out and instructing consistently for about 8 years (I never lifted a finger during pregnancy, HA!) Although I have tremendous strength etc, I have never got the "results" that would normally relate with my efforts. I have many visible changes but nothing in comparison to what I would have attained as a much younger person doing the same workouts. It has been a mental and emotional process to be okay with certain aspects of my older wiser body, to actually embrace it as it were.

So, I ask why do you workout, why do you desire a firm body, what are your motives?

Mine, now? I want to grow old gracefully, I want to feel good and strong right up until I say, "so long" to this world. I want to model good healthy practices for my children and I want to be a good and wise steward of the body God has let me borrow!