Today I walked 4 miles over at Fiesta Island with a couple of my friends.  I also did it yesterday.

8 miles.  In 2 days.  I don’t normally walk 2 miles in 8 days!  Not even close!

It wasn’t easy.  I’m not in good shape at all.   Currently, it feels like my left hip is popping in a weird direction.  My shins are screaming at me, and my feet are blistered.  I am a 90 year old woman.  Oh, my hip!  Oh, my feet!

Kinda freakin’ pathetic.

But damn if I don’t feel like I accomplished something good.  I feel like this is a good path for me to be on.  I get health benefits from it, and I get to spend time with two of my girl friends.  Which is also important.  We talk, we laugh, we snark, and then BOOM!  4 miles is done.  Honestly, it does make the time go faster.  Makes the misery of working out much, much more tolerable.

I want to lose weight, I want to fit better in my clothes.  But I also want to not feel like crap anymore.  I want to have energy and endurance.  Plus, I’d like to do something besides my usual routine of work-eat-drink-sleep.  I want to feel like my not-so-fit self can actually accomplish something.

My one friend who I’ve been walking with, recently sent me this in a text message:

NObody but you judges you on your weight.  We all love you.  Do it for you.  Do it for the clothes.  Whatever.  You will still be Merrydeath.

(Merrydeath, by the way, is my super-rad nickname.  Get it?  Meredith?  Merry.  Death.  HEE!)

But the point she was making is that I’m pretty much my own harshest critic.  No one who truly knows me is going to love me more or love me less because of the number on the scale  says.  That shouldn’t be the reason why I do any of this.

(I’m not going to lie – I got teary when I read her text.)

So I’m doing this for me.  For a multitude of reasons.  But for ME.  And I’m proud of myself for jumping right in and trying once again.

I feel like I had a lot more to say about this; tons of witty analogies and whatnot.  But I think the exhaustion has taken over at this point.

My body feels like it is falling apart.  But yeah, I’ll be going for another 4 miles tomorrow.