Fitness with Gratitude
Looking at my desk, I can’t help but smile. The cards of thanks and emails from fans who are helped by Functional Fitness brings the greatest feeling of gratitude.
“Just a thumbs up on the new format. I like it! The natural background is relaxing and the types of exercises using weights more often is challenging, therefore making me feel as though I am getting a better work out.
I have been exercising with you for MANY years and find it a healthy way to start the day. Thanks and continue the good work. By the way, I am 73 and can still do the exercises that you, Suzanne does, and not the seated versions and that is in part because I have done the 6:30 A.M exercises on PBS since I retired.” Carol.
Letters like that help me to ignore the occasional hater mail I get. What’s ‘hater mail?’ It’s mail from someone who has a hating heart. Like the lady who wrote, “You are too fat and need to lose weight.” I didn’t realize that being 117 pounds is too fat, especially after losing 60 pounds and keeping it off all these years. I have to admit it’s not easy to keep the weight off and as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realize that it’s better to be a size healthy than a size skinny.
Since the camera adds 10 pounds, I used to lose 10 pounds before shooting my series. But I can’t do that anymore because I’m not dying to be thin!
The lady didn’t know I have Hashimotos disease – a condition that slows my metabolism down so much a turtle would win the metabolism race with me. She didn’t know I have hypoglycemia and if I starve myself to get real skinny, I could go into a coma. I feel a great sense of gratitude that I’ve survived death so many times, I have had more lives than a cat. She just figured that since I’m on TV, I must have an easy life and how dare I not fit into her idea of what a fitness person should look like!
I remember growing up and all I saw in the media was super tall, skinny blonds. Nothing against them of course, but the world is made up of ALL KINDS of beautiful women.- short, large, average size, red heads, brunettes, grey haired and tall blondes. And beauty is more than skin deep.
It’s easy to judge people when you haven’t walked in their shoes. That’s why I believe it’s not my job to judge – just to help all women over 40 that are short, tall, large, or small, reach your best health ever! Functional Fitness has brought me a quality of life I would never have imagined. It takes effort of course, but well worth the results.
All without drugs or surgery and so it is with a loving heart, I encourage you to live a life filled with your best health ever.
Suzanne Andrews founded Functional Fitness in 2008, the most popular fitness series for boomers and seniors broadcasting on over 159 Public Television stations throughout the US and Canada. Read Suzanne’s inspiring comeback story of how she survived a near fatal accident, From Deaths Door to Producing a National Fitness Series. Feel free to send Suzanne a message here.
