My first blog post EVER on here was titled “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, I’m My Mother After All,” and I spoke about how as a child I watched my mom do the yo-yo diet thing, lose weight, gain and do it all over again… in fact, it wasn’t only my mom, but every single female figure that I grew up with. My mom, aunts and some of my mom’s friends would get together to share diets, they’d even start them together and support each other. It was an interesting thing to watch to say the least. They’d move together to the next diet and the next.
When I became an adult and out of pure rebellion, I refused to do the same, I had been very active until my late 30’s having practiced kickboxing, ran 5K’s and even trained for a whole marathon when I found out i was pregnant. I had my daughter and in the two years after her birth, I put on a lot of weight. Then one day it hit me… I had become my mother! (cue the music TUM TUM TUM!) I was in trouble and big time. I created that first blog post before I even started P90X as a way to figure out what the heck I was going to do. That’s when I found out about P90X and the rest is history.
While I grew up hearing about the cabbage soup diet, and the eat nothing but eggs diet, my 5 year old is growing up hearing about P90X, Insanity, TurboFire and the many other workout programs that i’m exposing her to. She knows about muscle, about running fast, about Kenpo, races, etc., She walks around, flexing her little muscles saying ‘Look, I’m SUPER strong!” She has worked out to Kenpo X and Ab Ripper X from P90X and even told me the other day as she was walking in from school and i was working out “MOMMY! WHYYYYYYY did you workout without me?” and yeah… she wanted me to start the dvd again, uhm, no, I don’t think so. I told her to jump right in and she did. She also knows about “good food” and “junk food.” We don’t deprive her, we allow her to have sweets every now and then because after all, she’s going to have to learn to make her own choices when she grows up. At our local farmer’s market, they call her “the girl who does P90X.”
Just like me, she’s a bit of a tomboy, a bit of a princess. She loves girlie shoes and tennis shoes. She loves things that bling and things that makes her heart sing, and she’s not afraid to sweat. She’s competitive (like me) and determined. She ran her first 5K this year and won first place (and yes, with a little help from daddy). One of the things she wants for Christmas is a P90X, a TurboFire and an “insnanity” shirt 🙂
As a mom, I know that I’ll make TONS of mistakes in raising her… I do hope that I can continue to support her and encourage her love for fitness and a healthy, balanced lifestyle. I also hope that I can guide her competitive spirit to be one that is more interested in the fun of competition than in winning all the time. I also hope that my guidance will encourage her to make the right choices in life, not only in the area of health and fitness but also the other areas that are important, like her friendships, who she dates and what career she chooses.
For the longest time, I resisted being like my mother… I did not want to go through the same level of suffering that she went through in regards to her weight. I hope that one day, my little girl grows up and writes the “mirror, mirror, mirror on the wall” post with joy and pride knowing that I did the best I could with what I know.