Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Reclaiming me

Since the Kid was born, I haven't really felt at home in my body. I lost all the weight I gained while pregnant but it didn't stay off when I quit nursing and when I broke my ankle (double reduction in activity/metabolism that those were about the same time).

Then I felt particularly betrayed by my body that it was so lousy at staying pregnant, then getting pregnant at all.

Now, at 6 weeks or so postpartum, I've lost the little weight I gained with this pregnancy but this is not my body anymore. I'm all stretched out in strange places and my endurance is awful. I'm also reminded that if I don't get and stay in shape, the consequence is dying young of heart disease. For some silly reason I practiced calculating my 10 year risk of a cardiac event (heart attack or stroke) and it's quite high for someone my age. Not good. My aunt and my dad have heart disease and were diagnosed young.

So I decided to set myself a goal and get into shape. Fair warning: there may be upcoming posts about my feeble efforts to get into shape. My goal is to run a marathon after graduation, 2 years from now in May. To get there, I plan to run a 5k this summer, a 10k in the fall, a half marathon about a year from now, and some other race between that and the big marathon.

I'm starting small with a 5k training group 1 day a week and walking at least 30 minutes at least 5 days a week. Next month I'm going to work on my diet if all this exercise is going well.

It is high time to feel at home in my own skin. Hopefully this exercise helps with that.

1 comment:

  1. Good luck! It's really hard to find the time to take care of your body, but it sounds like you have a lot of motivation, and I know you can do it!

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