🔒 Your Worthy Body: Conclusion

Chapter 22 Go Hard or Go Home. Conclusion. This book is my COVID-19 baby. In March 2020, when the world came to a screeching halt, I was inspired by a mentor who declared this time is for everyone who's ever said they want to write a book. This mentor has since revised that statement as quarantine life unfolded. It brought the loss of life and jobs, mental health issues and overall discord and collective trauma. Managing work, online schooling and a general shift in pretty much everything does not make for a good creative writing space. I believe we will see research and studies for years to come revealing long-term effects of those who tested positive and recovered academic gaps and how this impacted our mental health. I'm grateful our family didn't experience any of this in 2020. Yes, we had to figure out new patterns and workspaces, but in general, we were spared from the traumatic effects. Back to March 2020, through my mentor's words and a consistent prompting by the Holy Spirit, I felt God calling me to focus more heavily on writing this book. So I did, but I didn't sit down and bang out all 60,000-plus words in a matter of days or weeks. Instead, I approached this goal with bite-sized chunks of time to write 500 words in random spaces of 30 minutes following my heart for the day. With such a sporadic writing schedule, one could say I didn't exactly give it my full effort. I'd argue I did. It may look different than my colleague who wrote a full manuscript in three weeks, but I found the rhythm and pace that worked for me and my situation. Did I go hard writing the message? Not really, but I got enough done little by little, in a way that worked for me, except for the one weekend I booked myself a little cabin in the woods, a glorious act of self-care. Most of these words came in between endless meal prepping and lingering in the kitchen disguised as cleaning, while my kids shared slivers of their heart. It's a fitting analogy to our fitness and overall health. The saying go hard or go home is meant to encourage those exercising to give it their all or don't even bother. Stay at home. We've been together long enough that you can probably surmise my feeling on this statement. You actually don't have to give it your all every time you approach a workout. Remember enough from no pain, no gain. She is the antithesis of go hard or go home. She's also a lot more fun to hang out with. We've discussed the importance of rest and how gentle mobility workouts can promote an increased range of motion, stabilize joints and prevent injury. Part of my journey includes finding balance in my movement and food. I'm not always great about perfectly executing it, but I'm getting better, I hope and pray. The words here help you find your own balance. The problem with balance, though, is it's not very exciting. I've never seen a morning show segment or Buzzfeed story about a mom who got up to walk a few miles most days but hits news. Others prepared lunch for her children, but sometimes let them buy lunch at school, tried to volunteer at their school when it didn't conflict with work or other obligations, and provided dinner as a mix of takeout, healthy meals and fridge clean out. At the end of the day, though, she was content. She didn't go crazy in anything, but she got the job done, whatever it was. She may have achieved balance in her day, but it wasn't very sexy. Quite frankly, it doesn't make for a compelling story, isn't that what we all want, though? To be able to complete all our necessary tasks, so nothing suffers, and going back to the beginning of our time together? Isn't contentment something we need? As for balance, what exactly is that we hear of work-life balance, balanced exercise, balanced nutrition, balanced government hey, we can all dream. Balanced health looks different for different people and in different seasons of life. For some, this means taking a 30-minute walk after dinner. For others, it's rising before the sun and her people to complete a six-mile run or head to a bar. Class Balanced health for new moms may simply be having enough time to shower, brush their teeth and eat something while nursing the baby. The thought of 60 minutes of exercise sounds simultaneously heavenly and ridiculously elusive. It wasn't until my 40s that I started paying any attention to balanced health. As we've discussed, my previous seasons were extreme and ill-focused. Upon entering my 40s, god taught me that, in taking care of my body, I needed to set it up for long-term vibrancy. Every time I've trained for long-distance races or half-marathons, my body acted out. One time my feet were in so much pain I had to wear stabilizing shoes all the time, including waterproof flip-flops while showering. Another left me with hip bursitis so bad I couldn't sit cross-legged for longer than about 12 and a half seconds. These were not examples of vibrancy. I understand they are often side effects of ramping up for an event, whatever that may be. I began to wonder, though, if what I was doing to my body now would prevent me from doing what I wanted to later. Later, I want to sit on the floor with my grandchildren and play with the Thomas the train tracks I've saved. Later, I want to travel the world with my husband. I want to visit ancient ruins and historical places that require us to hike and climb. Later, I want to get off the floor with ease. If I live a fitness life in extremes, I may be decreasing my chances of vibrancy later. As a doctor once told my husband, the strongest muscles in the world won't help you if you can't bend down and pick up your car keys when they fall. I do want strong muscles, but I also want to be able to pop up and down off the floor and respond to life as it comes. These days, I'm caring less about how I look though let's be honest, yes, I do care and more about how I function. For me, balance now is the key to that. It's not very sexy, though. A great story does not come from doing a lot of different exercises so as not to burn one body part out. Telling someone I do a couple of days of strength training, a little running, a lot of walking and mobility doesn't capture much attention. It certainly isn't very inspiring. As my years progress, I hear people say I really don't care what I look like, I just want to be strong and healthy. I love this approach. Yes, we should all have this attitude. I ask, though where's the model for this? Where is the example you can follow and think I can do that? My hope is you now have the model. You have permission to do what is best for you, not what the morning shows, tout the internet declares as the latest and greatest eating or exercise plan or your favorite Instagram influencer does. Doing what is best for you may look completely different than what you've learned or expected, and that's okay. Play around with what you've learned here in order to figure it out. We've covered quite a bit, from faith to food to fitness. I hope you downloaded all the resources and goodies that accompanied this book. After all, if I'm going to tell you to stop something, I want to give you an alternative to start. My goal in this time together was to simplify things for you to take away any shame of feeling like your eating, movement and or body don't measure up. As I say in my podcast episodes, I leave you with this. What's the one simple thing I hope you remember from reading this book? Your eating, movement and body don't have to be perfect. You just need to move your body in a way that works for you and fuel it with God's foods so you can do what you are called to do. You are worth it.