A Beautiful Work In Progress

by Mirna Valerio

Who else can you commiserate with when you are at the tail end of a long stream of gazelle-like runners?

Forty-five miles left to go, and I still felt golden.

I planned to employ every tactic I had to get through whatever extreme lows and periods of self-doubt I would experience.

I had told her my whole story, about how I had thought I was having a heart attack years before and how running helped me achieve a whole new level of fitness that I hadn’t had since high school.

Running allowed me to become a better person in general. And now I couldn’t do it.

Nothing is more pleasurable than this work, this run.

I was also still working furiously on losing weight (which I continue to do)

Ms. Valerio changed my view on exercise completely.

Ms. Valerio always had a passion for running and had a great way of passing that on to her students.

you start to believe that you can do anything.

Acknowledging and welcoming your self-worth, your own extraordinary power, is incredible. You become unstoppable.

Prep for Prep 9. It was and still is a two-year program (in reality it’s lifelong, as far as I can tell) that prepares economically disadvantaged urban middle-school students for entry into elite private schools like Phillips Exeter Academy, Choate Rosemary Hall, and St. Andrew’s School.

Hence, I hung out with them and my journals, scribbling away furiously, especially after bad days at school, and there were many.

My message for anyone who is in middle school or who knows someone in middle school (please share this with them) is simple: Your body, whatever its size, whatever its hair color and hairstyle, however its height, whatever its age, is acceptable. Your body is acceptable just the way you are.

No matter your age, if you’re in your forties like me, or ten, fourteen, thirty, or even sixty, your body is a beautiful work in progress.

What is your message for Middle Schoolers?

I weigh about 240 pounds. I’m still fat.

as of the end of 2016, I’ve run nine marathons and eight ultramarathons longer than 26.2 miles.

I like to surprise people.

Instead of being ashamed of doing what you do or being what you are, I ask two important questions: Why not celebrate it? Why not be proud of the fact that the body you are in can do great things?

Runner’s World “Ultra” profile

“The body positivity movement strives to create representation for marginalized bodies.” What exactly is a marginalized body? It’s a body that doesn’t conform to, heed to, or acquiesce to socially accepted body criteria and therefore exists outside of the norm, on the margins of what is deemed acceptable.

Like a guy with wobbly, weak, aching knees?

Let it be known widely that inclusion of all bodies is important in my own health-and-fitness mission. As someone whose actual job and passion is to be inclusive of all, it would be remiss to omit any body iteration.

The notion of fat acceptance is quite simple: there is hardly anything wrong with being fat.

The truth is, those people don’t know me. They don’t know that I run lots of miles a week, or that I weight-train three times a week, or that I don’t run to lose weight.

doctors. I will continue to preach and live body positivity because at some point we will drown out the trolls with the message that fitness is for all bodies, for all people, and for all hearts.

We’re always heading somewhere, and I want to believe that most people want to be going in the direction that is best for them.

I have a body that is amazing and strong. It’s flexible and agile.

This body isn’t meant to stagnate or cease moving. When we stop moving in mind, body, and spirit, we stop learning. When we stop learning, we stop living. Therefore, when we stop moving, we stop living. We stop evolving toward being the humans we are destined to be. This body is fierce, beautiful, and unapologetic. It’s meant to move through the world as it wishes: lifting, walking, and running, rolls and all. Love handles, bouncy boobs, curves, tummy, butt, back fat, and all. I honor her by continuing to move along the spectrum of health and wellness, and in turn she honors me by living vibrantly. Fat girl running, swimming, moving, learning, pausing, progressing, jiggling, rubbing, chafing, shaking, sinking, rising, living, being.