Things I Love – Fitness Edition

There are a lot of things I hate about this getting fit business, like getting up before the butt-crack of dawn, pain, all the planning involved, aches, giving up diet coke…did I mention aches and pains?  But there are also things I love about it and I have to focus on the love part in order to get through the day, so here you go:

• I love the feeling of accomplishment/self-satisfaction that goes along with sticking to your guns and not wavering from the program, even when it’s really hard.
• I love working up a sweat.  I don’t know what it is, but I love that moment when I’ve worked up enough of a sweat that it trickles down my face, down my neck, and onto my chest (no, this isn’t porn – stop that brown chicken/brown cow music right now!).  I guess it’s a sign that I’m really working hard and it makes me push even harder. (hey!  Still not porn here – stop that!)
• You know that moment when you’re at 17:45 on the elliptical (or treadmill) and you think you can’t possibly make it to 20:00 minutes because you’re going to die right now and your legs are going to fall off and really, please God, just make it stop?  And you keep going anyway and get to 20:00 minutes…and then push on to 25:00 minutes just because WTF was with that whining back there at 17:45 anyway?  I love that.
• I love pushing through barriers.  I love it when I can add 5 or 10 minutes to a workout that I couldn’t do the day before, or finding out I can do exercises I couldn’t do before.
• I love buying new, heavier weights because it means the ones I have are now too easy for me.
• I love that I can lift a lot of weight.  A lot of girls don’t dig on lifting weights because they’re afraid of looking bulky.  I know that’s not going to happen because girls just don’t have enough testosterone to build bulky muscles without chemical help.  Muscle burns calories so more is better than less.
• I love calluses, blisters, and scraped and bruised knuckles on my hands.  They mean I’ve been working hard, and I’m proud of these hands that can do so much.  When we were kettlebelling together a friend told me “blisters are your bitch hands dying,” and I’ve never forgotten that.  Whether it’s from kettlebells or boxing, my hands are definitely not pretty or girly-looking, but they are most definitely functional.
• I love not being full to the point of feeling like I’m going to burst.  Ever since I stopped with the sodas that “I’m full” mechanism has turned back on in my stomach and I can once again regulate how much I eat.  It feels great to not have that awful bloated, overly full feeling.
• I love the way my legs feel the rest of the day after a morning elliptical workout.
• I love to hate my elliptical machine.  I’m glad I got off the fence and spent the money on it last Christmas.  My gimp foot appreciates that I’m not trying to use the treadmill, and it actually feels a lot better than it has in a long time.  I really waffled over that decision because it was not cheap and I was afraid it would sit unused, but it has been worth every single penny.

So there you have it, my list of things I love about getting fit that doesn’t have anything to do with losing weight.  It helps to remember these things when I am so tired I can barely lift my head off the pillow in the morning.

What do you love about getting fit?