Embrace the Sweat

**QUICK SIDE NOTE: We are 13 days into our Mile a Day challenge! How is everyone doing? Are you simply loving it!? I'll admit, I've missed two days in there (kids, hormones, attitude). But, I am not going to let my all-or-none personality get the best of me, so I continue to try and do my best.  Because that's all we can really ask of ourselves, really. **

When I started exercising in July, I hated it. Just being honest here. Yeah, I guess I did love all the endorphins pumping through me. The self pride and emotional high for having completed something challenging also felt pretty good. But the feeling of being totally overheated was just not appealing. Clothes, constricting. Thirst, unquenchable. I felt like my face would almost turn purple, I'd be so hot! Yeah, I guess it was the middle of summer, but something just didn't seem right. I felt like I could only workout for a maximum of 20 minutes before I'd pass out from heat exhaustion! But then I realized something:

I wasn't sweating.

Even on the hottest day and hardest workout, I'd MAYBE start to glisten, but no real dripping sweat. But then, after about a couple of weeks of eating right and exercising, I started to sweat!  Like, needing-a-towel-on-hand kind of sweat! At the same time I noticed that I also wasn't getting overheated during a workout and was able to go longer and harder with out dying from heat exhaustion. It was awesome!

Has anyone else experienced something similar?

I'm not going to claim to know much about the science of sweat, but I DO know that it is through sweating that your body is able to regulate its temperature an keep you from overheating. So my theory is that as my body was not used to ANY physical activity really, and maybe sorta forgot how to do it's job. Can your body forget how to sweat? Because that is what it felt like.

Now, I sweat buckets and I love it. When I come home from a run, or finish my daily workout from Mal and TJ, I am dripping in sweat. I feel awesome and I feel healthy. I feel like my body is expelling toxins and cleaning out all the gunk that have built up over years of unhealthy living. I feel youthful. I feel like I really accomplished something awesome. AND I feel like doing it all again tomorrow!

So this I say to you: EMBRACE THE SWEAT! It means your body is smiling inside . . . that's what I've decided :)

And if you are looking for a great workout to get your sweat on, here's what I did for today:

2 RFT (Rounds For Time: meaning do all the exercises in sequence twice through as fast as you can. Record your time to see how you have improved when you do it again later)

8 Burpees
20 Situps
8 Burpees
20 Pushups
8 Burpees
20 Squats
8 Burpees
20 Bicep Curls (I have wimpy arms and did these with 5lbs weights. Ha!)
8 Burpees
20 Walking Lunges

Happy sweating! *maniacal laugh*