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Today a very dear friend lost her dad to ALS. It was a long battle (for both of them) and on Sunday Laura had planned on running a half marathon. She still wants to run it because SHE CAN. She has a healthy body that can do glorious things – things her father can no longer do.
Remember the 5k I ran a few months ago? The race was for a young man who had cancer. At the time of the race, he was in remission and was doing very well. Not long ago, the cancer came back with a vengance and today, this young man lost his battle too.
*sigh*
But a wonderful thing also happened today. I got a call from Oklahoma Blood Institute telling me that my blood that I had donated was used at a hospital in OKC and had helped save someone’s life. That feels pretty amazing to me.
All of these things has made me realize that I have been acting like a spoiled, petulant brat. I have this gloriously wonderful body that, despite my best efforts, is still amazingly healthy. I don’t have any chronic conditions, no pain, no recurring illness, heck I don’t even have seasonal allergies. And yet, I abuse this body with food and lack of movement. I take my health for granted every. single. day. and yet it continues to hang on, hoping I will give it the proper attention it deserves.
Today, I finally gave it some attention. I had some errands to run this evening and I thought that while I was out, I would stop by the local park and walk for a bit. I knew I didn’t have long before the sun set, but I also knew that something was better than nothing. So I walked. I walked because it’s what I do best. I only had 15 minutes but those 15 minutes held a lot of meaning for me. They signified that it’s time to grow up a little bit a lot and stop playing Russian Roulette with my health.
But what does that look like? Getting serious about health? For me I think it looks like this:
- taking my calcium supplement every day (and a multivitamin)
- working my body at least 3 days a week for as long or as short amount of time as I have
- finding ways of incorporating more veggies into my meals
- continuing to work hard on overcoming my emotional eating problems
- making time for things that keep me balanced – yoga, my friends, God, books.
So that’s it. This isn’t a Rocky Balboa kind of “I’m really going to do it this time!!” kind of post, but instead it’s more of a realization that I need to stop kidding myself that this body is going to last as long as I want it to. I know that there will be times when I forget all this when faced with a decadent brownie, but maybe if I re-read this post often enough, some of it will sink in.
Hopefully sooner rather than later.
