I think we all spend a lot of time being down on ourselves.  Too much time, when we consider how short life really is—why would you want to waste any moment of your precious time telling yourself you aren’t good/smart/happy/rich/strong enough?? 

So let’s look for ways we can make POSITIVE changes and POSITIVE self talk a priority in our lives. 

Looking around at quick options to make these critical changes, gee, what could we do…? OH, LOOK! WE COULD EXERCISE!! 

Granted, I am biased on this subject.  However, my bias comes not only from my own experience seeing what happened to me when I changed my body by making food changes and exercising, but I see it every month at bootcamp. 

Every month a new bootcamp session starts and we get new people to the program.  The first week they don’t say anything.  The second week they smile more but are still quiet.  The third week, they smile and talk, and by the fourth week they act like they are part of the gang.

Exercise involves demands on your body.  These demands can be large or small, and every time you start an exercise program it is likely going to feel like a huge demand.  Your mental and physical responses to those demands are what counts. 

Mentally, you have to have some discipline to get yourself to do something another part of you doesn’t want to do.  It might just be “get out of bed a half hour earlier” or it might include “keep going” or even “speed up.” 

Physically, you also need to have discipline to reach or hold a position, or push a weight through your range of motion, and to endure the soreness of your muscles that reflect your body doing something to which it isn’t accustomed.

But what happens after you have made those demands on your body and know your mental and physical responses after a few weeks is one of the magical things about exercise: YOU KNOW YOU CAN DO IT.  That knowledge is worth a heck of a lot.  (I don’t need to tell you that—you’re the one who paid the price!)

The next time you come across a mental or physical demand, you realize that you have met such demands before and emerged victorious.  You have a quiet confidence that you can take with you wherever you want to go.  So turn down the volume on any negative self talk, and turn up the volume on your positive self talk.  You know you can do it; you already did.

Good for you.  Keep it up.

Exercise helps not only your physical body but your brain as well.  This means that not only can you look good strutting around the beach, you can sound smart too.  Beauty AND brains.  What a deal.

One main benefit of exercise (there truly are so many it’s hard to choose just one) is an increase in blood flow throughout your body.  When you’ve got more blood pumping around, some of it is bound to get all the way to your brain.  With an increase in blood flow through your brain, you will feel and be more alert and focused.  (Remember all those studies about kids being better students when they have recess?  Same thing.)

With increased blood flow to your brain, you are better able to preserve your brain tissue that starts to decline with age.  The use it or lose it mantra applies to your brain just like it applies to your body.  Similar to how a physical therapist moves paralyzed limbs to keep blood flowing through the limbs and preserve tissue, you need to use your brain and keep nutrient rich blood feeding your brain tissue in order to preserve that tissue.  Start it now, at any age, and keep it up for the sake of your mind!

You should want to treat your body better than you treat your car.  You can always buy a new car.  But a body?  A brain?  You only have one.  ONE.  For your ENTIRE LIFE. 

Living with diabetes, you know what happens when something in your body stops functioning the way it should.  Why risk the same thing with other organs like your brain and muscular and skeletal systems?  Please treat your body better than you treat your car.  Exercise can be so fun, and takes so little compared with its huge rewards.