the fine line between inspired and perspired

Lately i have been looking for inspiration. Aha, i thought, I need to find a good magazine to keep me motivated, give me new diet and exercise ideas, keep me from getting all my fitness tips from episodes of the biggest loser.

So i've looked at a couple (oh my but how many fitness magazines are in circulation right now?!) and finally bought a 'self' mag to start the ball rolling. It was pretty good at the start -- Live your dream life, Secrets to younger skin -- but the more i read the more guilty i felt. An article on healthy hair had me feeling doomed to brittle, thinning hair for the rest of my life - unless i throw away my blow dryer and straightener and buy all sorts of fancy (expensive) hair balms. An article on butt exercises had me feeling like i might need to start saving up now for some derriere plastic surgery to lift the inevitable droop. A celebrity interview had me thinking I might actually be a bad person for eating carbs, sugar, and not attempting a cleanse of some sort at least twice a year.

And maybe I am a bad person for all of the above. I try hard to exercise and eat right - but not nearly hard enough. And reading in a magazine all of the ways i could be trying harder is not motivating, its exhausting. There are too many things i don't know, too many variables to consider in any attempt at fitness. Is all of my exercise pointless if i'm not eating the right combo of protein/carbs directly before/after? Will my butt eventually reach the backs of my knees if i don't perform 10 leg lunges a day? And, most defeating of all, is my personal goal of becoming 'someone who runs' doing more harm than good as it impacts my knees, my feet, and my hips?

At the end of the day i have a lot of healthy confusion. I don't know the science so well as i should and i'm sure this keeps me from my optimum fitness in a profound way. And yet I feel like I can't really do all that much more. So what is this motivation i'm looking for? Maybe its just stories from friends and families of positive things that are working for them, with the full knowledge that we all have very different physiologies. Maybe its just adopting a personal mantra involving a sentence or two about exercising well and avoiding mnm's generally. Or even just embracing where i am now and how far i've come. And when i find a magazine with just the right balance of all these things and more, i'll definitely be the first one in line for a lifetime subscription.
~middle sister