You Have To Decide What You Want

As of July 4, 2011                            January 2011              

This week has been interesting. I started Monday off with a bang. I thought I was suppose to run 4 miles instead of the usual 3miles and I did it in record time. Wednesdays run was at a good steady pace, but Thursday I felt like I had lead boots on. I could not get myself into the run. My wife and kids have left me home alone for a couple of days and it was hard to motivate myself to get home faster... Oh well, I got home and I got it done. It is one of those lessons in life. When your destination is somewhere you are not looking forward to there is no urgency to get there. And when there is no urgency to get there you tend to feel more pain along the way.

I was thinking about the importance of doing something for the right reasons. It is not hard to see where most people go wrong in setting goals that they have no intention of really keeping. They say they do, but they are unwilling to really change their habits. Some people want to lose weight so that they can eat like they used to...kinda defeats the purpose, unless that is their purpose, and they want to make the run back up the scale and end up worse off than they were before.

When I started my journey I had two motivations. First and foremost I knew I should lose weight, and second there was a chance of winning a prize. The prize, to be honest was only enough for me to make an effort to get started. I really did not think it would be mine at the end of the day.  I went in thinking it cost me my fee, but if I lose 15-20 lbs I will consider that a win. So, I kinda minimized the idea of winning any money pretty fast.

The funny thing was the further I pulled ahead the less it was about the money and the more it became about feeling good. I still have not jumped on the band wagon or become a "health nut." I think there is something to eating right, but anything you get too wrapped up in takes away from the enjoyment of living and causes more stress than it is worth. I just want to feel good physically. I want the mental alertness, and the energy to work in the garden or go for a hike. I just want my spirit to be as free as it can be inside this body I have been given. I want to confirm my own thoughts that I have always had, that if we listen to our body it will tell us what we need, to accomplish what we want to accomplish. That is something that we as individuals must decide for ourselves. And that is usually why diets don't work. I believe that life should be a spiritual experience in a physical body, but allowing ourselves to get out of shape makes our body more of an emotional prison for our soul.

Eat Less and Move More, Becoming Physically what I already am Mentally.