This August marks the 6th year of my fitness journey, I call it a journey because fitness is not a destination for you to arrive at. It is a lifetime journey; you must keep working at it to get better. Better can mean different things at any given time. For example, better in a season can look like me getting more than 5 hours of sleep per night.
On this journey I have learned a few things and I will be sharing in this post.
1. DELAYED GRATIFICATION: Fitness has taught me how to enjoy the benefits of delayed gratification. When you start working out is not the time you will see the results. This takes time, and you have to keep going even when it looks like nothing is changing. Just like in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, there is seed time and harvest time. It takes about 4 weeks for you to start seeing some progress. This has also transitioned in other areas of my life, for example, as a child of God when we are believing God for a miracle. The miracle doesn’t happen immediately most times, but we continue to pray and trust God for it.
2. ENDURANE: The longest 45 seconds you will ever experience will be when you are holding a plank. When I first started, I could only hold a 15 second plank but now I can go up to 90 seconds (while pleading the blood of Jesus…lol). Endurance is like a muscle, we must keep building it to get stronger, this can be applied to our everyday life. It’s like when we are waiting on God for something, the weight of the wait is what gets us. This should be the time for us to ask God to strengthen us while we wait.
3. CELEBRATE YOURSELF: My body has been home to my wonderful children, and it never ceases to amaze me what it has gone through and how it has made me stronger. My body is not perfect, but I love all of me. Every single part of it. Working out has made me stronger and I get to see my body in a different way. You must learn to celebrate yourself because there will be a time when there won’t be anyone to do it or in some cases people would rather look the other way instead of celebrating you.You are doing hard work, it’s okay to celebrate you.
4. DISCIPLINE: Motivation gets you started, but discipline keeps you going. There will be days when you don’t feel like working out, but you must push yourself. Sleep is very sweet, especially the sleep when you hit the snooze button when your alarm goes off. Discipline gets you out of bed on the days you want to sleep in. Discipline is a practice, the more you practice the better you get at it. Start out small, then build on it. Just like spending time with the Lord, there will always be a distraction, you must create time and be disciplined to keep the time.
This picture was taken in 2014. Keep going, you will get to your goal.
Slow progrress is still progress.
Quiting won't get you there faster.
You are stronegr than you think.
Question of the day: Do you workout? Yes/No, what are your reasons?
Until next time, remember, you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.
Awesome Journey Dami. Way to Celebrate yourself and your accomplishments.