Respect Your Body…It's The Only One You Have!

After three amazing, healthy, and strong weeks of officially training for IMLP, I came down with something.  I coughed myself to sleep, woke up covered in sweat..it was not pretty.   I was on the verge of having to make a doctors appointment and I haven’t been to the doctor for illness in YEARS.  I was BUMMED.  Thankfully I have a wonderful husband, a wonderful coach, and a wonderful furry snuggle buddy (and a little self confidence ;)) who helped to remind me that I am STRONG and that a few days of rest to let my body fight to get healthy would be ok.  It would not set me back, but rather give my body a chance to recover and rest and come back to training right where I left off.  When I am back to healthy again I will have all of this wonderful pent up energy to put back into training.  Trying to push through training when I am sick or not 100% would take energy that my body needs to heal itself.  And so today is day three of resting.  I know that if I would have pushed to workout yesterday or today (when I am starting to finally feel 1000x better) it would take away precious energy that my body needs to heal.  I am respecting my body, something that most of us are not always very good at, right?

It can be so tempting to just push through illness.  To just keep on going full speed – work 8 hours get the workout(s) in, cook, clean, get laundry done, check off everything on the “to-do” list,  not get enough sleep or rest to let our bodies properly fight off the illness, life’s gotta go on, right?  I have pushed through far too many “mild colds” that have gone on for days or weeks because I don’t let my body rest and use its energy to heal.  This time, I was sick…it was no mild cold and three days later I am almost back to normal.  How? By RESPECTING my body.  By resting, hydrating, getting nutrients and getting a little more sleep than normal.  All of the energy that I normally use to workout for hours each day, I let my body use that energy to get healthy.  I fed my body the nutrients it needs to fight off germs and illness.  

My body naturally woke me up before 7am today, which is a really good sign! I was able to take Brutus on an extra long Saturday morning walk and get my healing body moving.  I am hopeful that tomorrow I will be able to hop on the bike for a nice easy ride with no intensity and on Monday I hope to be back to a normal training plan.  Respecting what my body needed to heal really paid off.  My body is something I am extremely proud of and so so so blessed to have.  Not because of the way it looks, but rather because of what it allows me to do.  So much of what I do is dependent on this wonderful body that I am blessed with and I look forward to spending many many many more years doing the things I love (with the people I love) thanks to my wonderful body.  

A wonderful (almost 100% healthy!) Saturday morning

So I have a challenge for you:  love & respect your body!  Think of all the things your body allows you to do and learn to love it for those things, not hate it because it doesn't look “perfect.”  If you are respecting your body by moving it like it wants to move, feeding it like it wants to eat, and giving it time to rest and sleep; and in return it is allowing you to use it to do what you love, then it is perfect!