Greetings my friends! Todays take home message is that small changes can make a big difference!
I've been reading this book called "The Power of Less', and in it the author suggests that we will be more productive in the long-run if we focus on one small, attainable goal per month. I've set my intentions about where I want to be in life, but to change everything all at once would be overwhelming. I think that in order to succeed, I need to keep my eye on the prize. However, I think focusing on one small goal at a time will be more sustainable in the long run than a complete overhaul.
My main career goal in life is to be an exercise and nutrition expert. I want to be a coach, directing people how to lose weight, look great, feel fantastic, but most of all BE HEALTHY. Crash diets are not the answer. I've been there. And it didn't end well. I was on an obsessive diet for a long time that has to do with cellular cleansing. I thought I knew everything there is to know about nutrition and how the body worked. Well, now that I am older, I question many of my past beliefs. I question many of my former gurus. I feel that the information I learned in those years is still valuable to me, but I think it needs to be incorporated into a broader spectrum of nutrition.
This particular lifestyle involved green vegetable juice until dinner, proper food combinations (don't mix proteins and starches), and as much raw food as possible. No nuts, no beans, no sweeteners except stevia, only organic free range meat (which doesn't apply to me because I am a vegetarian), no cows milk (only raw goat cheese), and only wild fish were allowed. The diet was basically all vegetables, and the more raw food the better.
This lifestyle also involved getting regular colonics. I have no quarrels with colonics. In fact, I actually really like them. Its good to feel so clean and pure afterwards. My energy and mood usually improve and I have a fresh start for eating healthy foods again. The case was with this diet, that I was consuming so much juice and so many raw vegetables (and killing so much candida... but thats a topic for another day) that I actually ended up feeling like crap most of the time. The process of detoxification really blows if you do it too fast. I had headaches, low energy, obsessive thinking about food and what I would eat next, swollen lymph nodes, and at one point I even broke out in a nasty rash. The toxins are trying to exit the body in any way possible. Getting a colonic would instantly relieve my symptoms, but they would return after a few days. It was an endless cycle, and I believe it was caused by doing too much, too soon.
This time, I am going to take it slow and move along more gradually. I have a long way to go, I have really fallen off the wagon since my raw foodist vegetable juicing until dinner regime. I eat pizza, french fries, bagels, cheese, and desserts. I am obsessed with desserts. Don't get me wrong, I eat a TON of healthy food too. But especially since going back to school and focusing on that, bad eating habits have creeped their way back into my life. Whether it be convenience or comfort (or finances), I indulge a little bit more than I would like. For instance, I get a free meal after working for 3 consecutive hours at the ThinkTank. The catch is it expires after a half an hour, and I have a class directly after I get off work in the basement lecture hall underneath the ThinkTank. I am usually really hungry at 1pm, and its hard to turn down free food. When I don't have time to get anything from the Food Court (which is most of the time), I am limited to the items that are for sale at the coffee shop. Being a vegetarian, my options are limited. We do have... bagels and cream cheese. The funny thing is I hadn't eaten a bagel in 5 years or so since before I started working there. Stress and hunger won out in the end. We have a vast array of convenience foods, none of which are particularly healthy (mmmm zucchini bread). So inevitably I ended up eating some junk food on occasion. But I also eat a lot of salads, homemade curries, and veggie stir-frys, so its not all bad!
The point of that story is that I am in a completely overwhelming part of my life right now, and I won't be able to make a successful total-life overhaul in a short amount of time. It took me awhile to get where I am now and it will take a long time to get to where I want to be. I don't want to be detoxing so hard that its coming out of every pore in my body and making me feel like death. I want to make very small changes and do them consistently for a month before moving on.
This month I picked a goal that has nothing to do with my eating habits, but will help me motivated to live healthier throughout the day. My goal is to exercise for ten minutes every morning. It may sound small, but it sounds manageable. I might end up exercising for longer than that. But
my goal will be just ten simple minutes in the morning, EVERY SINGLE DAY NO EXCEPTIONS.
I will focus on adding that to my morning routine first, and I will post on my blog whether I did it or not along with other successes I experience.
Ten minutes.. that is all. I can do this! Run for ten minutes, jump on the rebounder for ten minutes, do yoga for ten minutes.. just do it. Right away after I have my cup of coffee. Coffee... followed by exercise. Every single day!!
