My Inspiration!

I just realized I never posted about what inspired me last week! I promise, it was not because of a lack of inspiration but more a lack of time, which is something I have been blogging about these past few days. Not just the lack of time, but how we as women put others first thus resulting in a lack of time for us to do what we want and/or need to do.

But I digress...last week as I was sitting here doing whatever I was doing, I decided I wanted some noise. I rarely turn the TV on during the day and sometimes play the radio but I wanted to watch last week's two American Idol episodes that I had TiVo'd. Unfortunately when I tried to play them I realized my TiVo is acting up and didn't change to the right channel. The only thing there to watch was last week's episode of Biggest Loser.

Now I don't normally watch Biggest Loser but I am interested in it enough to have it on my Season Pass list evidently. The biggest reason I don't really like it is because the workouts and the weight losses they show are very unrealistic. Sure, it makes for good TV but it's not something we in the real 9-5 world can do, nor should we do. I mean working out that many hours each day and losing that many pounds each week is not something anyone can really maintain. And I'm afraid it gives people in the real world a false set of expectaions in which they feel like they failed if they don't have the same level of results of these show people. But I watched it anyway mainly because I wanted the noise. I know that sounds crazy but when you work from home, alone all day, it does get too quiet at times.

But I digress again...As I was watching the show I found myself getting very emotional in response to the emotions of the people on the show. Yes, the routines and weight loss results may be for TV, but the emotions of the contestants seem to be for real. And since they started out competing as couples, there is husband / wife, father / daughter, mother / son, etc. It was amazing to see the support and raw emotion there for each other and for themselves as they experienced a victory in their weight loss journey, regardless of the size of the victory. I simply cried when one lady realized she was now in a different "hundred" in her weight number. And for the father with the bad knees to finally do a squat, that one had me pulling out the Kleenex's.

But what I really realized is that my little weight loss story is nothing compared to these people and the challenges they are meeting head on. Sure they are on TV and they have trainers and people preparing their meals and they have these great incentives to do well on this show, but their weight challenges are real, and the emotions of meeting those challenges are real as well. And when I see what they are doing as individuals and as teams to better themselves physically and medically by losing weight, I realize I need to sit down and shut up and start doing squats and lunges and eating cleaner and so forth.

Because if that father with his arthritic knees can do a squat and the entire room of contestants is in tears of joy for him, I can do a squat in his honor as well. And in doing so, I'm helping my younger but still arthritic knees to hopefully be in better shape when I get to his age, if I'm not there already! :-)