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I want to extend a warm welcome to a guest blogger today who is an exceptional human being. She loves fitness and health and all that that entails. She strives to be a healthier person every day and is an inspiration. I have had the privilege to get to know her through my day job as well as going through an apprenticeship as a Barre Amped instructor. We are both teaching at Serenite Fitness and have gotten to know one another quickly. I'm so glad she's there to support and cultivate healthy decisions. She is a long distance runner and offers us some insight on how to start running as well as simply making healthy life decisions starting now.
May I present to you the lovely Beth Hayes:
As children we are taught to brush our teeth. It is not a habit that we
innately arrive with. Throughout childhood and adolescence we may have resisted
this practice because it didn’t seem fun, or provide any instant gratification.
Yet, over time and through the years we all kept the brush moving over our
teeth, every morning and every night (except maybe those late nights where
night became morning :-)).
Because of the time and consistency invested in brushing our teeth it became a
habit, almost second nature. Since the strategy behind developing a tooth
brushing habit was successful for most, why not take that same approach to
health and fitness? So many messages are conveyed about seeing very fast
results through crazy dieting and extreme exercise, yet what enduring habits
are being formed through those methods? Likely, none. Unhealthy eating, emotionally driven eating and habitual
lethargy are behaviors that take years to develop. They won’t be sweated away
in 90 days or sometimes even a year.
Daily decisions have to be consistently made to choose healthy habits
and eventually the food and exercise battle will subside and healthy living
will become second nature, just like brushing your teeth. The investment you
have to make is a little time, A LOT of patience, and consistent actions taken
to make a permanent positive change in your life, no matter how long it takes.
Exercise, for most, is a cumulative
engagement. It is an activity that begins in a small way and eventually evolves
into something bigger. It requires
the time, patience and consistency mentioned above. A perfect example of cumulative exercise is running. There
are 500,000 marathon runners in the US each year. Many of us look at the idea
of completing a marathon as an impossible aspiration. But, every single marathon
finisher was only able to finish their race because of the first steps they
took to get to the starting line, and thousands of those first steps involved
walking. Again, if we take the concept of repetition and do small actions
consistently, those actions will compound into something much greater than we
thought ourselves capable of.
Maybe make your first goal to do a mile. Walk the first quarter,
speedwalk the second quarter, jog the 3rd quarter and try to run
hard for the last quarter. Perhaps try doing this 4-5 times a week. You will
start getting stronger after your first week so when the second week rolls
around you may be able to turn your speedwalk segment into a jog. After 3 weeks
you should easily be able to run jog/run a mile without stopping and that’s
when you add more distance. You have to master a short distance and make it
habitual before you attempt longer distances. You will be amazed at the stamina
you’ll gain if you stay consistent and you will come to a point where you will
want to push yourself a little more than the last run. As always, in everything
in life, it’s not about how fast but how far you can go. How long can you
maintain your healthy habits? Hopefully if you haven’t started yet, today you
are on the starting line of a lifelong course of consciously choosing to be
healthy. It’s an ongoing course leading you to the healthiest version of
yourself that you can be.
To download the above motivational graphic, right click, save wherever you would like to keep it. It is yours! If you choose to use it elsewhere please credit Fanciful Ink. If you wish to purchase a print, please contact me at fancifulink@gmail.com
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