How Did I NOT Just Die???

I easily just had the hardest work out of my life. And that's saying a lot considering I used to work out with 180 extra pounds on me. 

I've been working on a 21 day challenge an amazing friend and Fitness Professional gave me. And when I say fitness professional, read also "he's a body builder, so I might die". My goal is to complete every single work out he gives me, and burn no less than 600 calories per work out. 

And. I. Have. Been. Killing. It. 

Hey look!! I said something nice about me! That's different! 

So Thursday morning I woke up with a massive migraine. Like the bad kind that has you wishing someone would just shoot you and be done with it. Let's just say I didn't get my work out in. Friday I had the risidual effects of said migraine, so no workout then either. Which started to pile on the typical shame I've come to know so well. 

But today is Saturday! And Saturday I woke up with zero pain. So back to the gym I went! I thought, I could start on day 8 (where I had left off on my work outs) and see how I do. So, on to the elliptical I went for my 15 minute warm up. 

Then I did this workout:

Usually, this alone would be enough to kill me. I mean...those are a lot of reps!!! YouTube 21's if you don't know what they are. I did, and thought, clearly Adam wants me to die. But this was week 2 already, and believe it or not, the work out was a lot easier than last week. Still working my way up to a 60lbs power clean, but I'm getting closer!! 

After said magical work out of bicepy goodness, I went and sat in the sauna for 15 minutes. I always consider this the dessert portion of working my butt off so hard in the gym. It gives me time to just sit and think about everything I've just done and dream about everything I'm gonna do. 

Only this time was different. Usually I sit in the sauna with my eyes closed, or staring down at my phone or one particular spot on the wall or floor to avoid awkward sweaty eye contact with other ladies trying to squeeze out a few more calories in their work outs. But today, I was looking up, and a woman walked in who absolutely blew me away. She came in an started shadow boxing. In. The. Sauna. 

It's like 100 degrees in there! And she's doing cardio! I was doing well to sit and breathe, and here she comes in running in place, throwing punches, dodging, and kneeing some imaginary bad guy in the face, and I'll admit, I totally stared. 

I tried to avoid it at first. I would watch then look away, then watch again, etc. Eventually I just gave in and watched her for the last few minutes I was in there. I just kept thinking "how the heck does she even know what to do?? What combo is that? Holy crow did she just get faster?!? Oh. Now she's running in place. Dude! I WANT TO BE HER WHEN I GROW UP!!!" As I left, I looked her square in the eyes and said "You. Are a bad ass" and walked out. She smiled and bowed a little and said thank you. She was amazing. 

Fully inspired by my new fitness idol, I decided to take my already exhausted body, and go tear it up some more. Remember, I had already worked out for an hour, so I thought: I'm just going to do the whole thing again, only I'll do yesterday's work out that I missed! So I hopped on the treadmill and did this:

In case you missed it...THAT'S A SUB 20:00 MILE!!! 

So, in high school, clearly I was not in athletics. I was in PE. And in PE, you have to eventually do some sort of fitness test to see if you can accomplish what even the bare minimum of athletic expectations might be. Part of this is the dreaded 20:00 mile. Basically the coach brings all of the hooligan non-athletes like myself out to the track and says run around this thing 4 times and you're done. Most of the other boys and girls finished in 15 minutes or so. It took me about 30. 

I remember the coach walking the last lap with me, trying to encourage me to go faster. Telling me how far behind I was and how much I needed to make up. Maybe she thought I was just blowing it off. I wasn't. I was just a 300+lbs teenager who couldn't keep up. 

Every. Single. Time. I've trained in the past, I have tried my hardest to hit that goal I got when I was 16. And Every. Single. Time. I've failed. I've come close, mind you. I've hit 21:45 more often than I care to admit. Even got to 21:00 once, but could never quite hit a 20:00 mile. 

Today, after working out for an hour already, all of that changed. I hit 19:30. Eighteen years later, 16 year old Kelly hit her goal. I passed the test.

I'm normal. 

No. I'm a bad ass. 

Because AFTER my work out, then my performance record, I then went on to do my Friday work out. This: 

Which means when all was said and done, I had worked out for this long:

And burnt this many calories:

Which means while I started out like this: 

I ended up like this:

That's probably the least flattering picture of me ever. But I don't care. Because today...today I was a bad ass. 

Lies I Believe 1

So I made this post Lies I Believe (part) 1, because honestly, I think know there are a LOT more than just one to two lies I believe. I know they are lies. But do I? Because I believe them. And if I do know that they are lies, but believe them anyways, what does that say about me?

It probably says that I need a whole lot of grace.

Or mental help, but you know, hey, I'm good with that.

I've been playing around with this idea for a little while about writing about LIB (because if I really type out "Lies I Believe" 4,200 times I will get seriously seriously tired of typing). Why? Because I think know I'm not the only one who believes something about myself, or the world around me that simply isn't true. And like I said in my last post, this blog started out as being very much about me and for me, but then suddenly morphed into something I never saw coming, and that was something about me, but for you.

My soul is railing against that last sentence. Like everything inside of me just welled up and called myself a pretentious jerk. How arrogant am I to think that I have something to put out there that could help? I'm no hero. I don't have a single thing figured out. Who am I to talk? Just sit back, and shut up. (Internal Kelly needs a Snickers or SOMEthing. Daaaang internal Kelly!)

But maybe that's one of the first lies I believe. I don't matter.

And here's the truth of it. I don't. This is not some sort of self-deprecating sentence that is suddenly going to have everyone going, "wait, I liked the Rocky analogies better!"...we're getting there. But first, let's be real. I am one single human being in a world populated with billions and billions of human beings. I am a part of one generation on a planet that has housed more generations than I know how to compute, and has Lord knows how many generations to follow. In the grand scheme of things, I truly am insignificant.

If that doesn't do it for you, then let's expand even further. I am in one spot on one couch in Lewisville, TX, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy, Known Universe, Unknown Universe. I'm also pretty positive I just stole that from something...like a play...or something. I'm not sure, but I'm positive if I hit publish on this post my Literary or Theatre minded friends will jump all over me with references from Our Town, or...wait...is it Our Town? Since I'm botching the quote completely, I don't know how to look that one up.

Gotta love that I totally just interrupted myself.

So here's the deal. When I went out to the beaches of Mexico last fall, I saw miles and miles of sandy perfection. I mean, waves upon waves crashing so majestically against layers and layers of white sand. Sometimes pushing it further inland, and sometimes sucking it back out into the water. It was spectacular. And nobody on planet earth can tell you how much sand is there. Oh, they can guestimate how many cubic tons, or whatnot there might be. But no one can say, why Kelly, there are "72.687 gajillion grains of sand on the pacific coast of Mexico alone". To which I would just smile and say, "yeah, but I was on the Caribbean side". And that's just one country! One little spot compared to the entire coastline of oh say, Australia, or Asia. Any rational human being would say "a grain of sand is insignificant".

That is, until a grain of sand gets in your shoe (or worse, your swimsuit) and starts to rub against tender flesh. Now what was insignificant becomes extraordinarily significant, what did not matter, becomes preeminent,  and no amount of outdoor showering is getting rid of the burn it left behind.

It mattered. Not because it was one of gajillions of grains of sand, but because it connected. Not with the 8 billion people on planet earth during this generation alone, but because it somehow wound up in my flip flop, between my leather strap and the top of my foot.

Could any grain of sand fill that spot, and do just as well at scraping up my sissy foot? Sure it could have. My callouses are on the bottom of my feet, not the top. But it wasn't just any grain of sand. It was that grain, or those handful of grains.

Insignificance obtained significance. At least to me.

So. Do I matter? In the grand scheme of things? No. I don't even register as a blip on the radar of existence. It's why we are in awe when we stare at mountains and oceans and star filled skies. We feel small. And we should remember that we are small.

But do I matter? Oh yes. Yes I do. I matter to so many friends, so many family members that I bounce up against, and sometimes even rub the wrong way. To my dogs I am the bringer of food, and affection (probably prioritized in that order). To my family I am the eternal little sister (no, really, I swear I'm actually an adult guys!), daughter, granddaughter, cousin, niece, aunt. To my friends, I am goofy, or serious, kind, or kind of a pain. But to everyone, I am Kelly, regardless of my relationship status with you. Just Kelly. Intrinsic and Extrinsic value. Value because of who I am, and to whom I belong. And I'm ok with that.

And Kelly struggles with lies she believes, like that she doesn't matter. Like, she shouldn't write, because who would care? But there's some sand in Mexico that proved otherwise, and a little scar on the top of my right foot that says, "even the littlest guy matters".

The smallest effort. The one last minute, last rep, last bite of food. It all matters. Because it matters to me. I wonder what life would look like if we all believed that what we did, or even more personally, who we are, actually mattered. Not in some moralistic behaviorism sort of way, but in the real deal day to day.

I'm pretty positive that's what every Dove commercial on youtube is about. And I think that's why they all make us cry.

You matter. I matter. Don't believe the lie.

Shake it Off

Why hello again. It's been a long time.

Ok, that was verging on creepy. But here's the truth: sometimes I have SO much to say, I have no idea where to start. And so what winds up happening is I open my mouth, and awkward comes out. But don't worry, I usually have a point, and very rarely does it remain creepy. Though awkward is NOT off of the table.

Let's try this again.

I kind of hate writing that. Can I just be really really honest for a second and say that I *hate* having to talk about new beginnings every few months, because it seems that I get all inspired, peak, and then come crashing right back to old bad habits, only to get inspired again, and repeat said cycle. As if y'all can't read that every time I write about "coming back".

I hate come backs.

But then again, don't we all need them? Like, aren't we actually kind of head over heels for them? That sense that that last failure wasn't the final nail in the coffin, and we are done for? That hope that maybe, just maybe, the 42nd time we screwed something up, that somewhere out there is someone willing to say, "Yep...let's go for 43! I bet 43 is your magic number! You can do it this time".

I don't know about you, but I need that. I am desperate for it.

I love come backs.

So this is my come back story. Not just to the world of getting healthier, but honestly to all of it. The writing, the sweating, the cooking, the cleaning up of life. It's spring, and that means renewal. That means attempt number 43 without so much as an eye roll from my friends and family, let alone from me. Ok...maybe I have rolled my eyes at myself a time or two. Possibly even while writing this.

So, I have some confessions to make. This last silent period was somewhat intentional. Goodness that sounds attention seeking. It's really not. I was intentionally not writing (instead of it simply slipping my mind). Why? I pretend you ask. Because I got terribly discouraged as a writer, and I'm just not angsty enough to turn discouragement into good writing. I'm lucky to turn a natural runners high into good writing. The culprit? Something I absolutely love. Something that makes me giggle constantly. Something that when I'm frustrated at work, I'll actually google in order to laugh at my desk for 10 minutes before getting back to the frustration. That something? Someecards. Yes, that's a real thing, and no it's not misspelled (I have it up in my web browser now).

I adore those hilarious little bastards. They make me laugh like nothing else, and there are about 800 of them that I would love to post at any moment if I weren't afraid that Liberty University would snatch back my Biblical Studies degree in a heart beat if the alumni association saw me post them. But the truth of the matter is that they make me laugh. A lot. So I look them up all of the time.

A few months back, on Facebook, I noticed a few of my friends posting one particular card over and over again, or some version of it. Whether they actually posted the card itself, or posted their own status update with something similar, the basic theme was this:

And all of the sudden, I wasn't laughing. I was a little embarrassed. I have a blog, nearly entirely devoted to me writing about dieting, working out, and the struggles therein. Have I just been embarrassing myself by thinking someone might get encouraged by it? Have my friends been rolling their eyes thinking, "Yep, there's yet another sweaty picture of Kelly on Facebook. Gross."

The answer I came to tonight was, "maybe".

As a people pleaser from way back, that still stings. As someone who finds a lot of her identity in how others view her, that's a little bit crushing. And as someone who struggles, oh so much, with trying to get up again for another round that will just knock me in the face, it honestly just hurt.

And so for a few months I went quiet. Worse than that. I was quenched. Like wet blanket on a fire, quenched. I was wrung out and discouraged, not just from working out, but from wanting to write at all. From thinking "who the heck cares what I have to say on anything"? I'd love to say that all of that came from a dumb someecard, but the truth of the matter is that would be way too simple. All of that came from my own fears, my own insecurities, my own weaknesses that creep up into my soul and whisper to my ears that I am a failure, disappointment, fill in the blank.

And it's crap.

But it is So. Very. Universal.

And while this blog very much started out as just my means of being real, of being vulnerable, and letting some stuff out there into the great internet cosmos of friends and strangers...it somehow morphed into something more. It became a thing where friends would write me messages or comments, or pull up beside me in the back alley of our neighborhood, and say "hey, that meant something to me. I was encouraged. I was inspired." This blog that was very very much about me, and for me, became about so many people and for everyone.

Because don't we all struggle? Don't we all have insecurities? Don't we all fail? Am I the only one? I don't think I am. Whether you are on chance number 43 or 453, I think we all need another shot. Another serving of mercy to lift up our faces and say, "It's ok. I still believe in you".

Whether that comes to trying to write, trying to work out, trying to lose weight, trying to lose insecurities, trying to get along with your spouse, or not kill the kids, trying to get out of debt, or get out of town, trying to make it in the world, or make it out of bed. We are all just trying.

And that's something worth sharing. Not because I've arrived. But because I need another chance too.

So, no, I didn't fall off of my treadmill. I got back on it. For the 453rd time.