Opinions of a Wolf

Hello my lovely readers!  I hope you all had great weeks.  Today I’m going to be talking about a new-found passion of mine that I believe you all are aware of–health and fitness.

I joined the gym back in January for a lot of reasons, but predominantly because I had high blood pressure at age 24, and I was not ready to start being sick at such a young age.  I’ve made a lot of progress since then and gradually have come to love to see what my body can do.  Recently I set a goal for myself of joining a local MMA club by next January.  I love having a strong body, and frankly the stress-relief that comes in doing something so extremely physical is incredibly appealing to me.  Plus it’s good to have a goal that’s a *fitness* one and not a *weight* one.  I’ve never claimed my new passion for working out and old passion for healthy eating were about weight.  It’s all about having a healthy body to me.

In any case, I decided it was high time to challenge myself with something to the next level, so last Friday I went to my first ever kickboxing class at my gym.  Allow me to explain that my weak point is absolutely cardio fitness, so a 45 minute long cardio-intense class was going to be very challenging for me, and I knew it.  When I first joined the gym I could barely run for 10 minutes without collapsing over and heaving for breath.  So I knew this was going to be challenging.  I was determined to make it through it though.

Since this was a Friday evening class, it was fairly small.  There were about 7 of us ladies there.  And lo and behold the very first thing we had to do was jump rope for 2 minutes to “warm up.”  To me this was not a warm-up.  This was jumping in with both feet (haha, pun intended).  Anyway, we basically mixed jumping rope with kickboxing sequences and jumping jacks, and I thought I was doing fairly well until I glanced at the clock and saw only 15 minutes had gone by.  Egads.

Let me tell you.  Around the fourth time the lovely teacher told us to jump rope, I wanted to give up.  I was definitely the least cardio fit of everyone in the class, and part of me wondered why the hell I was doing this to myself.  And now I’m going to admit something very nerdy to you.  I thought of the zombie apocalypse.  Seriously.

What’s the first rule of the zombie apocalypse?  Cardio.  Was I going to let the zombies get me, a young strong woman?  Hell no.  So I picked up the jump-rope, and I continued on.  I continued on through the evil suicide and push-up drills too.  I fought my way through the whole class, and I have to tell you guys, it was crazy empowering.  There is no way in hell I could have done that class 6 months ago, and yes it was hard, but I did it.  I also went home and collapsed into bed at about 9pm on a Friday night in sheer exhaustion, but I did it.

My body is strong, and it is fit, and the more I challenge it the more it rises to the occasion.  Nothing feels so good as waking up and feeling alert and feeling my muscles in my belly and arms.  Nothing is as cool as knowing I can sprint 5 blocks to catch the bus no sweat.  The more my body can do the happier I am and the younger I feel.  I never want to fall into the trap of unhealthy living again.

I know some people really hate the saying “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” and I agree.  But you know what is a much better and true saying?  “Nothing feels as good as healthy feels.”  And to the extent I have control over my health, I’m determined to do so.

I think that’s why I’m such a big advocate for a healthy America.  I want people to enjoy the happiness and thrill of having a healthy body that maybe they never had because of poverty or because of a lack of healthy education or what have you.  You don’t realize what you were missing until suddenly, almost overnight, you can survive a 45 minute kickboxing class and feel the adrenaline afterwards.

Happy weekends all!