005. Going M.I.A.

Hello?

......Jillian?


Are you there?

*crickets*
Oh, sorry, here I am! Yes, I admit, I went AWOL for a few weeks. School caught up to me, and with finals and papers and projects and stuff, something had to give.

Ya know, that's a phrase that's used a lot, or something to that effect anyway. "Something's gotta give. I had to let go of something. I have to prioritize." ...But what exactly is prioritizing?

Everyone has his own idea of what it is to prioritize. In all honesty, when I was in high school my priorities were as follows: computer/internet, food, diving, homework, family/friends. I'm not even kidding--that is my complete list of 16-year-old priorities. In the four years that have elapsed, needless to say I've matured quite a bit and my priorities have rearranged themselves and morphed to fit my needs. They now look something like this: family, friends, school, fitness, fun.

Fitness? What? Where did THAT come from?!

When I was in high school, I was usually doing something. It wasn't always exercise, but it was always SOMETHING, whether it was doing homework or going to a meeting for a club or sleeping, or actually being IN school, it was always something. I didn't have time to focus on me, nor did I care about focusing on me. (Long story short, I really did not care about myself at all in high school, in every area of my life. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.) When I got into college, I realized something important: I'm worth something. I'm worth troubling over. I'm worth whatever I want myself to be worth.

With this thought in mind, I started trying to take care of myself. I started with the most important aspect at the time--mental health. I definitely had some baggage from my past that I needed to let go of before I could get to anything else, so I started with that. It didn't happen overnight; it took about 2 years for me to finally be okay with who I am and where I'm headed, and to use the things that happened in my past in a positive way to influence my future. I've learned a lot from my past, and quite frankly I would not change a thing about it. I'm a stronger, more outgoing person because of it.

Lately, and for the rest of my life, I will continue to focus on this part, but in conjunction with an extremely important part of my health--physical health. Physical health and mental health are so closely linked, for one reason, due to biology. Hormones and neurotransmitters go hand-in-hand with exercise. When you exercise, you feel good! It makes you happy! Obviously nutrition is important as well, which I've also been more careful about as of late.

It took me a while to realize just how much I missed being physically active. I think the real "wake-up call" for me was when I bent over to pick something up, and my stomach got in the way. Now keep in mind, I will admit, I have never been morbidly obese in my life. My highest weight ever was 160 lbs. when I was 5'4". I have been considered overweight for a while, but never in any serious [immediate] danger. Bearing this in mind, my friends laughed at me when I told them the story. But for me, that was a big deal! Another big deal was when I was driving and I found my stomach pushing up into my lungs and making breathing weird...not laborious or anything, just...weird. I knew I needed to do something. With that said, I whipped out my old Turbo Jam DVDs and got to work!

But it wasn't just about doing the DVDs--it was finding time for consistency, and that took rearranging my priorities a bit. I had to fit ME into the mix. I had to learn that, no matter what my school schedule looked like, I had to do at least one DVD per day. I kept myself on a strict schedule and did not miss a single day. (Actually, I think that's a lie, I might've missed ONE day, but that's it.) For me, that's what it was about: carving out that one 45-minute block of time per day to work out. I made sure I did some schoolwork and then said "okay, it's 6 PM, I've got a WOWY date that I can't break so I have to go work out." After a while, I WANTED to work out! I really missed that feeling.

And now, even though I've been done with ChaLEAN Extreme (which I credit for getting me back on track) for almost 6 weeks now, I'm still going strong! I know I havent' posted in a while, and I'm sorry for that, but I've definitely been keeping up with the workouts! Thanks to my newly reinvented priorities, I'm on a great path for now.

So my question to you is this: how long has it been since you've last examined your priorities? Are there any changes you need (or want) to make? Is there anything that needs to be added or subtracted? Take a good hard look at your priorities, and you'll make sure on your own that YOU never gets lost in the shuffle.

~Jillian