What does running have to do with all of this?

Let's just say it ..... Exercise sucks.  Running sucks. Eating healthy sucks.

You know what else sucks ..... being overweight.  Being exhausted. Hating what you see in the mirror every day. Not being able to play with your child because your winded. Feeling repulsive and awful every day.

Yep, that's me in September of 2012, my son's 2nd birthday.

Now that I'm done with the self-loathing, let's move forward.

At my peak I was 208 pounds.  According to the BMI (I hate the BMI by the way) I had slipped from the overweight category into the obese category. How in the world does this happen? I'll tell you.

You start out a little heavier than you were because your getting older and your metabolism slows down. Then you get pregnant and eat your way through the next 9 months. Then, just when you are getting back on track and starting to lose the baby weight you have hip surgery that you spend the next year recovering from. Next thing you know you are 2 sizes up from where you were and feel awful, not to mention that hip issue you had surgery for isn't helped by the extra 40 pounds.

When I started going to church, and when I started believing in Christ, the funniest thing happened .... I started believing in myself.  Finding Christ gave me the strength and hope that I needed to live. For the first time in my life I didn't feel hopeless or helpless anymore, and let me tell you, NOT feeling hopeless and helpless is the first step to getting up off of the couch and doing something about it.

I started slowly by changing how I ate. The more I engrossed myself into the church culture the more fulfilled I felt and the less desire I had to stuff myself with chips, large amounts of pasta, pizza, ice cream, and cookies. I lost a few pounds ... at least my current wardrobe was starting to fit again.

Then I started walking (on the nice flat, air conditioned, no humidity, controlled treadmill that is) but it was sooooo boring (worse than running on the treadmill, at least when you're running you have to pay attention so you don't fall off and go flying across the gym), and so unfulfillin., I mean I just spent 30 minutes walking instead of doing something fun like eating potato chips, having a milk shake, or taking a nap and I only burned 120 calories, geeze! I mean I can burn that many calories walking into Chick-Fil-A and standing in line to get my nuggets, fries, and aforementioned milkshake.

So one day at the end of my 30 minutes on the treadmill I thought, "Hey, I wonder if I can run the last minute". I did and I felt great. After that one minute run I felt better after my workout than I ever had before. I tried it again the next day, same thing, hmmm maybe there is something to this running thing after all.



I decided to give the Couch to 5K program a try. I worked the whole program and to keep me motivated I signed up for a 5K that would be right at the end of the 8 weeks, The Color Run 5/31/2014.  Somewhere along the way I started to like it.

I'm not sure if it's the actual running, ok, it's not the actual running because let's face it, really all that happens there is that it starts to suck less .... what I really liked was that I was able to do something that I never thought I could.

I have since done another 5K and I've made the goal to do one run a month for the next year. I'm going to alternate between 5Ks and 1 mile fun runs since my 4 year old wants to run with me.



I know the Lord is making me stronger every day.  He is helping me build my strength and my character, he is preparing me for something great .... and I can't wait to see what it is. All in His time.