The Little Things

It is amazing what one little change can do to your life.  When you make that change you may think ‘What’s one thing among the many I could be doing?’  And then…. well then you surprise yourself and the Universe and the PTB join in the surprise and before you know it, your whole world is different.  I am at the early stages of that change, but it is there, lurking all the same.

My body and I have been locked in a battle since I stopped going to karate classes in high school.  My weight has been all over the place, as have my not so healthy habits.  I’ve gone through periods of change where things happened rapidly with what seemed like little effort on my part, but I was not doing things in a healthy way.  According to a doctor, I was, but I did not feel healthy.  So it didn’t last.  The weight came back, the bad eating habits came back, and all because it was just too drastic, too hard to stick with.

A friend of mine (hi woobs!) has made amazing strides towards her goals over the last year and a half or so.  She has some of the same issues as I do, and yet, she has not been drastic about her methods or even her goals.  I like that.  So I decided, now would be my time of change, using her as a beacon.  I started going to the gym on a regular basis, eating right, etc, and the weight started to come off again, and I felt pretty good.  Then I got sick, and had to cut back on the gym and lost the habit.  Then when I would feel better, my back would act up.  The cycle continued until my back finally went out and I now have a great chiropractor that I see fairly regularly.  I am also slowly trying to get back to the gym.

With this decision, to better myself for me, a host of other little changes have come about.  Even on days I cannot get to the gym or out for a walk/hike/jog, I will do a series of exercises at home.  This morning I was even doing a couple of them while I brushed my teeth!  With this, I have been going to bed earlier, and getting up in time to see the sun rise and turn the sky a lovely shade of pink with some oranges in there as well.  Then I read today that sunrise light, is the best at making a person feel awake and rested as they start their day.  I am also back on track with the eating thing – I even passed up a brownie at my parents’ house tonight!  I never pass up chocolate, let alone a brownie… that says a lot about the changes I’m making.

So what started this all off this time?  A picture.  A simple picture.  People tend to put up shots of themselves looking the opposite of what they want.  All this does is make the person feel guilty and they guilt eat, which is likely part of what got them to the point they are at now.  Instead, I found one of me at 16.  Thanks to karate I had an amazing figure at the time, and felt great.  It is not my short term goal, but long term, I think I could get there again.  Seeing how I can look when I exercise, makes me want to do it as a reward to myself.  It isn’t something I have to do, but something I want to do.  I know I feel better, and look better, when I exercise, I just have to overcome the things that the PTB throw in my face.  I know they’re just testing me, to see if I really mean it, that is part of their job.

“Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be.”

~ Karen Ravn