It’s been a pretty hard year at Campbell & Kate, so when I try to assess my accomplishments for the year, it can get pretty discouraging.

Then last Tuesday I put on my new 32FF Panache sports bra for spinning class, and I realized that I’ve achieved something very important after all, and it all began with last year’s Fit & Active September. Last year at this time, I met my goal of exercising 16 times in the month of September. This led to joining the YMCA in October, and this eventually led to listening to my doctor’s warning about my high cholesterol and enlisting the help of an amazing nutritionist. Since I mentioned my nutritionist last March, my LDL cholesterol has come down another 35 points to 102 (it was 217 last December), and my doctor says I am now in the “low to no risk” category for heart disease. On top of that, he’s halved the dosage for my blood pressure medicine.

I am so grateful to Nicole over at Fussy Busty for helping me start this path to better health. This year, Sophie at Two Cakes on a Plate is going to kick off a Fit & Active October, so look for related posts in the busty blogosphere.

I don’t have any “fit and active” goals this year other than to keep doing what I’m doing. Instead, my October goal is to be wearing a bra by 9:00 a.m. every weekday–pretty much the opposite of what Mia wrote about last week–because I have a theory that I need to be dressed so that I can walk out the door in order to be productive. Otherwise, I feel like I’m still in my pajamas, and I just don’t seem to take myself as seriously when I feel that way.

Even though I don’t have any fitness goals for the month ahead, I want to share my biggest takeaway after reaching last year’s Fit & Active goal. Everyone says to listen to yourself, and this was a situation where I had to take a risk to do so. We had been trying to save money by going without a gym membership, but I could tell that boredom was setting in after just five of my sixteen walks. I had already tried to make do with the cheap gym closest to our house, but it was super crowded, and the only class I liked was becoming repetitive. My husband joined an inexpensive gym with great equipment a little further from our house, but they had no classes, and I knew I would need more than weight machines, treadmills and ellipticals to keep going. The Y, on the other hand, was clean and spacious with a lot of classes taught by qualified instructors. The only problem was that it was 14 blocks away, and Mr. Campbell felt I’d never use it.

I decided to join to prove him wrong. I knew I needed to take better care of my health, and I knew I needed a gym like this to do so. Besides, if I didn’t use it in October, I could cancel my membership without losing any money.

Readers, this decision led to probably our third biggest argument in our marriage so far. We have an agreement to consult with each other before we spend anything over $200. Because a year’s membership costs almost $700, Mr. Campbell felt I had violated the agreement, but because I joined when there was no initiation fee, and each month costs $57, I felt I’d kept it. However, I knew why he felt bad–I had purposely joined without consulting him because I knew he would try to talk me out of it.

Fortunately, the risk paid off. I’m the slowest runner in boot camp and still can’t do a real pushup, but I can feel muscles in my arms, and my waist has reappeared. I knew my very health depended on joining that gym, but I am so very thankful that our marriage survived my subterfuge. We’re even getting stronger in the way we deal with money together.

So you can see why putting on my 32FF Panache sports bra to go to spin class last week was such an accomplishment.