Here’s a wonderful guest post from one of our fabulous customers, Ann Root.  Please comment below.  If you would like to guest post on Raising American Girls we would love to hear from you.

_______________________________________

I’ve recently rekindled my love affair with fitness. I was ready to start making fitness part of my daily routine, but worried that my hour an evening working out would be taking time away from my 11 year old daughter.

Even so, I couldn’t let worries keep me from bettering myself. I needed to be strong and healthy.  So the evening workouts began. While my husband and I worked out our daughter played or read, but always near-by. I noticed that she would “peek in” on us and once found her reading my Oxygen magazine. Next came her questions:

“Mom, can I try your yoga work out?”

“Sure!”

Followed by,

“Can I do your warm up with you?”

“You bet!”

And then last week she asked if she could try our chest and back routine.

“Wow! Really? Ok!”

I was excited at her interest in fitness and her desire to work-out. She didn’t see it as time spent away from her as I had worried. That’s not to say we don’t have our ups and downs. She does get annoyed that mom can do more push- ups, but she’s also delighted that she’s the only one in the family that can do reclining bound angle pose. It’s my hope that the lessons she’s learning in fitness will carry over to other aspects in her life.

1.       Do what you can and don’t worry what everyone else is doing.

2.       Even when you think you can’t do anymore try to do one more- you may surprise yourself.

3.       Change happens a lot slower than we would like.

4.       A positive attitude allows you to achieve much more than a negative one.

5.       Being good to yourself allows you to be good to others.

As moms and maybe even as humans we often resist doing things in life because we worry about how it will affect others. But what a pleasant surprise, by doing something for myself, by being good to myself I’ve given something good to my daughter.

Ann Root

www.annmroot.blogspot.com