Read this poster. Now read it again. Read it until you really GET IT. Yes, everybody would like to be thin, and yes that is a small portion of the motivation to exercise. But it should be just that - a SMALL portion. Honestly, if all you care about is being skinny, then just put your fork down and don't worry about exercise. You will "lose weight" and "get skinny" much faster by cutting way down on your food intake than you will by increasing your exercise. That's when we have to decide what it is we REALLY want. Would you rather be SKINNY or HEALTHY? What's most important to you? You'll have to forgive me - there are so many different ways I want to go with this blog right now - I will try to stay focused and just keep it to one simple point.....hmmm....what point do I want that to be today....... Let's start with "why". I want you to ask yourself that question. "Why do I want to exercise? Why do I want to eat healthy?" And if the answer to that question is anything other than "Because I'm an important person and I deserve to be the best that I can be. My family deserves to have the best me they can possibly have. I am WORTH it" then I challenge you to sit back and think about all of these statements. YOU ARE WORTH IT. It doesn't matter what anybody has told you before, it doesn't matter what you've spent years telling yourself, I am telling you right here and now that you ARE worth it. You are worthy of being treated well - and who better to treat you well than yourself? You may have other people in your life you have to consider. You may even have a great support system, a great spouse, a great friend - all people who we expect to be kind to us, to treat us well, to tell us we're awesome. And they should. But you know what, at the end of the day, the only people left standing there are you and the person in the mirror. And if that person in the mirror refuses to tell you how awesome you are, then how can we expect any of the other people in our lives to do it either? Loving yourself is not an easy task. So many people struggle with this part of becoming healthy. If I asked you to name one person who is constantly talking bad about you, I can guarantee you that nobody is worse than yourself. If I heard somebody else say some of the things about me that I have said about (to) myself it would be devastating. When a parent tells a child over and over that they are stupid, what does that child eventually think about himself? He's convinced he's stupid. Well, that's what we're doing to ourselves when we tell ourselves we're not worth the 30 minutes or hour of "me" time to go work out or to take that exercise class. Instead of looking at exercise as a "chore" that we "have" to do - take some you time and make it be something you enjoy. Let's teach our kids that exercise is a fun part of life and teach them how to implement it into our daily routine. Let's view exercise as a means of being healthy and not just in order to be skinny. Let's teach our kids that being HEALTHY is more important than being skinny. Let's start treating ourselves just as good or better than we would treat the one person on this earth we love the most. Read the poster again.....Exercise to be healthy, not skinny. Eat for nourishment and energy. Ignore those people around you who try to bring you down. And love yourself as you'd like others to love you. YOU ARE WORTH IT!!!