How we treat our bodies...

I think after having a baby you have so much more respect for what your body is capable of.  I often stare at Mimi playing with her toy piggy bank on the floor, now a whopping 27 lbs, and I think, "man, I grew her inside me."  To me that is so mind blowing.  Now that Mimi is learning her body parts, when she points to my belly I say "you were in there!" She just stares at me blankly, but I am still amazed by the whole experience.

Now I could continue on to say what a train-wreck my body was after my pregnancy with Mimi, or how I'll always have this saggy belly...but that's not the direction I wanted to go with this.

I've been getting progressively more sick with this cold turned probable sinus infection since Sunday, but Monday night I decided I had to get in my run.  I know crazy right? You're saying "geesh Jen, give yourself a rest!", but I'm driven.  With my 5K this weekend, I wanted to get in my run!  So I took two puffs on my inhaler (I have mild asthma which gets aggravated by being sick), put Mimi in the jog stroller with her Nanook of the north sweater to keep her warm and we set out while Daddy was at his kung foo class for a 3 mile run.  The first mile of my run sucked.  I spent every step wanting to stop and turn back.  My muscles felt achy, my body felt too heavy to move.  After I rounded the corner and got into the second mile I just stopped.  I stopped for a minute, drank some water, wiped the sweat off my face and just breathed.  I  continued running, and I kept thinking about all these phrases that our parents tell us....

You get out of life what you put in....
I thought about how that works for "body" instead of "life" too. You get what you put in...my body? I haven't been giving it the best lately.  I've slacked on my vitamins, gotten lazy about drinking enough water, spent late nights up reducing my sleep, haven't been stretching....What did I expect to get out of my body?

This brings me to
Treat people how you want to be treated...
Which I'm going to twist into "treat your body with the goodness you expect from it."  If I want to be able to function with a healthy body, I need to treat my body well too.  This means adequate nutrition, rest, and hydration.

Now that I've written all this I realize it really doesn't make sense.  I guess my point is (if I have one) that sometimes we don't treat our bodies with the respect they deserve, then we wonder why we get sick, we can't lose weight, we get sore muscles.

I am going to make a better effort to take care of my body.  I see exercise as part of this.  I want to leave time for adequate sleep at night (at least 7 hours), drink 2-3 liters of water daily, and start taking my multi vitamin again.

Take care of your bodies too! What are you going to resolve to do better for your body?