Not afraid of the mirror anymore

This was not a good morning. I woke up 15 minutes early (my set time to wake is 4:30 on gym days, so losing 15 minutes is a huge deal), I had a bad headache, my husband had stolen all the covers in the night so my muscles were cold and achy and I just didn’t feel like the gym.

Part of me (a really big part, actually) wanted to just roll over and go back to sleep for 90 minutes and skip the gym completely. After all, no one would begrudge me a day off, right? But I knew that I’d beat myself up all day, so I dragged my butt out of bed, pulled on my workout clothes and decided that I’d skip the pool today and find something else that peaked my interest when I got to the gym.

As I was up so early, I was on time for the 6am Zumba class. The only previous Zumba class I’ve ever taken was about 30 lbs. and many, many inches ago and I spent most of the class alternating between concentrating on not passing out due to lack of oxygen and staying away from all the stupid mirrors that seemed to be everywhere.

This morning was a completely different experience. At first I placed myself in one of the areas of the room that I could see the instructor but not myself in the mirrors. But as anyone that has ever taken a Zumba class knows, you move ... A LOT. Eventually I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And you know what? I looked good! Well, okay, actually I looked like hell: sweat dripping, red-faced, no makeup, and hair hanging in sweaty ringlets around my face. But every time I saw myself in the mirror, I was smiling, my shirt was all rouched up and I didn’t even spend the entire class tugging it down and while I have many more pounds to lose, I didn’t even see those in the mirror. I just enjoyed how far I’ve come and how much fun the class was.

So, today’s victory: I’m not afraid of the mirror anymore!