Embracing My Health

After I posted my recommitment to embracing my health – I got ready for bed. As I was brushing my teeth, I created the intention to remember my commitment. I know myself . I can be so disconnected with my own commitments that I will “forget” them by morning. More than once, at the end of a day, I make a commitment to eat healthy and do what supports my body physically and my heart spiritually. But then the next day, maybe sometime around 1 or 2pm, I’ll suddenly stop and think: “Wait! I was going to do better today!!” It’s as though I’ve thrown all my intentions and commitments right out of my mind, as if they never existed. Once I remember, I feel disappointed and want to back up the clock and start the day again. Ugh, what a cycle, right?

But today, I remembered and quickly. I made myself a yummy green smoothie (watermelon, strawberries, and spinach with all the healthy goodies). It tasted and felt great. I was feeling good.

Fast forward to dinnertime. We had cabin fever and decided to head out for dinner. We went to Taco Del Mar. Because I had been so good all day and eaten so sparingly, I thought it “wouldn’t hurt” to have a bigger dinner. So instead of a smaller portion and the healthier ingredients of say, two soft tacos or a taco salad… I had a chicken quesadilla. And not just a chicken quesadilla, but a chicken quesadilla platter! It was tasty… (but so are the tacos).

How I went from a too large and nonnutritious meal to thinking I needed something for dessert is lost in the mysterious workings of my addict-addled mind. Trust me when I say… when it comes to sugar, I’m not sane. Seriously! Ask my husband, Paul. He’ll vouch for it. In fact, he gamely and bravely tried to talk some sense into me while I stood perusing the various ice creams (looking for the brand with no HFCS – a form of insanity right there – but we can talk about that later…) in the freezer section. But I rationalize it away and carried on. I picked up two quarts of Breyer’s All Natural ice cream, one flavor for Amira… and one for me, since I wanted a flavor that had wheat in it and my daughter is allergic.

With the ice cream safely in the car on its way home with me… Paul starts to get through. He talks about how I help and consult my friends and family with their health challenges. He talks about how I spend hours researching and coming up with suggested plans and “prescriptions” for their healing. Then Paul says to me: “You need to do that for yourself.”

And I realize he’s right.

If I take even a cursory look at a file with my health concerns and issues… ice cream wouldn’t be on my recommended list. But I’d rationalize with you that I want to eat the occasional cup of ice cream. Don’t buy into my addict talk, though. The problem with that approach? Two things. One: quite honestly, my definition of “occasional” is a unfortunately loose. If there is a carton of ice cream in the house, you can be pretty certain I’m having more than a cup of ice cream more than maybe once or twice a week. And two: Healthy people CAN eat an occasional bowl of ice cream without harm or detriment to themselves. But me? I’m not healthy. I’m not healthy physically or spiritually. The dinner and then the ice cream right on its heels – it was a physical filler and numbing agent – in hopes that it would carry over and fill and numb my spirit too.

There you have it – not even 24 hours out from my declaration and I hit my own resistance to what I said I wanted! When I’m disconnected with myself, a rote and habitual form of resistance runs me.

I realize now, as I’m thinking it over and sharing it with you – what I have ahead of me is the work of being connected with the healthy life I want. Embracing my health is more than eating the right foods and exercising. It’s not really about that. It’s being awake. When I slow down, meditate and am listening and present to my life and my spirit – the work I want to do is no longer work or agonizing resistance. Instead, it is pure joy and passion again.

I’ll close with a version of the “tagline” I created for this when I first started out…

This is me, signing off and Embracing Love and Life! Embracing My Health!

PS – It wasn’t the most economical thing to do – but after having a cup of ice cream, I threw out the rest of my carton of ice cream.

Hi everyone!  Wow, keeping up my dailies has been more of a challenge than I expected. I blinked and missed 3 days. My body has felt a little rugged the last few days. Not in a sick with a bug kind of a way… but in manner that I would guess is getting rid of toxins. This morning is the first morning that I started to feel that my body was clearing the crud and starting with a fresher, cleaner slate. I have to say, it does feel good.

So far, I haven’t worked any sort of focused exercise into my daily routine. That’s coming right up.

Here’s to moving forward step by step.

I see the headline on the Yahoo homepage: “If current trends continue, nearly all Americans could be overweight by 2030“. I click over to an ABC News video. And what is the commercial that I’m given to atch before the news article? Oreos. A back and forth “bonding moment” between a son and father (albeit over webcam) eating Oreos together…

Anyway. The video news blurb audio wouldn’t play for me after the advertisement for whatever reason. The only thing I could see was video image after image of overweight people. I gave up and searched online for the study and found it: (”Americans Could Be Overweight Or Obese By 2030.” ScienceDaily 29 July 2008.).

The net conclusion of the study: as much as 86% of American adults will be overweight or obese by 2030.  96% of non-Hispanic black women and 91% of Mexican American men…  That’s no small number.

The only thing that will begin to alter these numbers are you and me.

Want to buck the trend with me?

Today was tough and I ate far too much sugar. I can feel it too. My body is strugglin’. I had a good dinner and no bad evening snacking. We all struggle with habits we’ve built over months and years and it takes time to break them.

Tomorrow is a new day. And that always good news.

Have you noticed when you draw the line in the sand for yourself – all of sudden – it becomes the most difficult thing in the world to stand behind it? That’s the way it has been for me the last 4-5 days. Almost from the minute I started this blog, I started resisting my own goals, my own best interest and my own health. The petulance of a two-year rears up in me and I find it really hard to give her a time out and tell her that she can’t come out of her room until she’s ready to grow up. Do you ever experience that?

The hard thing to reconcile is that to quit that behavior is to do just that – QUIT IT!

So here I am, quitting it!

I’m finding that choosing the right foods and the right amounts is pretty easy for me during the day (mostly). Evenings, however, the snack-a-beast tends to rear its ugly head. I’ve been asking myself why that might be. What habits have I made that encourage unhealthy snacking? And why do I feel like snacking if and when I don’t need food?

The reasons that I think are contributing to my nighttime snacking are:

1. Not eating enough and ending up hungry and craving food at the end of the day
2. Social eating– evenings are when I get to spend time with Paul. Making a snack and chatting together before a movie or at a break is an enjoyable time.
3. There’s a tendency for the eating to be more mindless — when I am eating, I tend to be distracted by a movie, visiting with friends, talking, working on the computer, etc.
4. Misplaced reward – when I’ve been good all day, I find myself thinking, “I can afford this or that treat – I’ve been good all day.”

I think for a lot of people, evenings are the let-your-hair-down, it’s “my time”, “I can finally relax” time. We’ve been pushing ourselves through the day to get all our responsibilities completed. During the day, we are accustomed to being disciplined about what we are doing. I think that may make it easier to apply discipline to our food choices. But evening rolls around and we shed our productive, efficient, and responsible selves and let ourselves treat ourselves to either the wrong kinds of food… or food we don’t need. We feel like we deserve a break. And we do.

Except.

I am working to be healthy. I want to live my life with optimal physical health and fitness. So here’s where I become motivated to redefine what “my time” means. Does it mean I can eat whatever I want… in whatever amounts appeal? It can’t if I’m going to live the life I want physically.

Here’s where we brainstorm together. What fills the need for … or is even better… than eating in the relaxing evening hours? Ideas? What lifestyle habits can we create to give ourselves the rest, relaxation and rejuvenation we need at the end of day without compromising our physical health and well-being? Share them. I’ll be doing some research and will share what I find alongside with your wisdom too!