Morning!
Got up late yet again! 5am, the horrors, the horrors! Still, though, everyone was still sleeping, so I did the StretchX DVD.
I will admit, I really really really like this DVD. 3 months ago, you could never have sold me on how important stretching is, and how much more flexible your body can become – what I’ve lost out on over the years! Besides doing this DVD, I also try to stretch at least once a day in various positions during various History Channel presentations, and I can truly pinpoint the differences in my physical abilities.
21 days! I’ve completed 21 days! Yippee! And weirdly enough, I’ve lost inches on my waist/thighs and hips, but…gained a pound this week. I look slimmer but weigh more! I figure it must either be muscle gain, water retention, what have you….but as I freed myself from the tyranny of the scale, I’m not angsting over it what so ever.
So you know what Day 21 means, right? It means that this week, week 4, is the recovery week (if you can call it that – Yoga Death debuts not once but twice). And then I get to take Day 30 pictures! I’m looking forward to seeing the changes (and I finally have a reason to get a bikini too! 
).
So…what have I learned about myself. Gosh, where to start. One, you can live your entire childhood/young adulthood/etc. with a pre-conceived notion of what you are capable of achieving (with my lousy bone-structure, let me tell you…it wasn’t much) and then in your 30s or 40s or 50s or what have you…you can give yourself permission to expand your boundaries and blast past every single one of your delusional barriers. Now, this is not just my P90x experience talking – it’s also my karate experience, my fighting-past-fear-even-when-I-was-petrified experience, my super-fast recovery from surgery experience, etc.
When you’re overweight and fat, you tend to gloss over your physical appearance and focus on your other traits and characteristics. That’s an excellent thing to do, after all – if you cannot appreciate yourself with regards to the way you look, feeling good about yourself for other purposes is simply a healthy thing to do.
But when you’ve lost the weight and realize, omigosh, I’m fit, I’m sexy, I’m in the best shape of my life, it really adds a profound confidence in the way you view yourself. Back in my college days, I never wore tank tops, I never went dancing, I never learned to ‘move and groove’ etc….and now? Now, I realize I can look phenomenal for my husband…and equally as important, for myself. I’m unbeatable!
If only I could have realized and internalized this in my college days!
Ah well, these things happen. But having gone thru this journey myself, I have made a promise that my kids will always know how to appreciate their own magnificence, be it their brains, creativity, common sense, beauty, etc. They’ll never feel less than others because of insecurity; they’ll know they’re the best.
To gain that lesson, I’d go thru my hell of a school life again and again. The most agonizing of your life’s experiences often deliver the best gifts of your life…if you give yourself permission to learn from them.
And that’s Day 21,
Barbara
ps – More Tony Horton goodies!