Journal Prompt: When have you been your worst enemy? What were the circumstances and outcome? Did you learn anything from it?

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We can be so toxic to ourselves. I am trying to be my best friend and treat myself with grace and kindness. That treatment includes how I take care of my body. I would say some of us could improve on how we care for ourselves. Sometimes we need to be better parents to ourselves. We are old enough now to set our guardrails and try to deter ourselves from danger. We are also old enough to allow ourselves to indulge in whatever we want, even if it is to our detriment. Nowhere is that more apparent than in American fitness. 

Working out is a wonderful, beautiful thing. The benefits to our body and mind are phenomenal. But the effort it requires is mountainous, especially when it hasn't been a part of your routine in life. However,  moving is detrimental to our quality of life. 

In the article Exercise and stress: Get moving to manage stress, the Mayo Clinic lists 5 benefits that exercise will provide towards stress relief. Again, these are probably things that you have heard or been told before, but repetition will hopefully lead to action, so here goes.

Exercise: 

Pump your endorphins

Cuts down on the negative effects of stress

Is meditation in motion

Improves your mood.

And, throwing in my own contribution to this list, if done right, can contribute to eliciting the relaxation response as well. 

Now, on the flip side, a sedentary lifestyle is the kiss of death. I know that sounds quite dramatic, but it’s completely intentional. It needs to be taken seriously. 

A sedentary lifestyle is what a lot of us can easily fall into because we might be trying to keep up with life’s ups and downs, and when we get a breather, we just want to rest. However, there is a big difference between resting and consistently not moving. It is spending a lot of time on your butt. It’s a lifestyle in which we hardly engage in physical activity. In the article, Health Risks of an Inactive Lifestyle, Medline Plus lists 10 health risks associated with an inactive lifestyle. Interestingly enough, these 10 health risks are very similar to the risk associated with poor stress management. 

These risks include:

Obesity

Heart disease, including CAD and heart attack

High blood pressure

High cholesterol

Stroke

Metabolic syndrome

Diabetes (Type 2)

Certain cancers

Osteoporosis and falls

Increased feelings of depression and anxiety

The article goes on to give some suggestions on how to start working on increasing our level of activity. 

Personally, I am trying to get back into it because time waits for no one, and neither does age. It is not easy until it becomes habitual, and you don't stop. So here I go again because it is important. Exercise is a great stress reliever and helps to keep the mind sharp. Let's release some stress, balance ourselves out and get moving! The below pin from Pinterest is a good suggestion to kick-start a workout.