Image courtesy of nongpimmy at FreeDigitalPhoto.net
I realize it has been awhile since I wrote on my topic for 2015, of healthy. It’s time! It isn’t exciting, but it is time!
I am getting into the habit of exercising at the gym. I was doing better, am hanging on by my fingernails, but still have the habit. We had snow and ice storms a week apart. Then I sprained my ankle while on a work day at church so had to take it easy on the foot parts of the exercise.
It’s now two weeks later. My ankle seems to be almost back to normal and seems able to handle the exercise. So I expect to get back to my three times a week model again.
Meanwhile, in terms of weight loss…I’m moving back and forth between a 2 pound range. There isn’t much movement there. I did discover that my thyroid is low again so I’m back to an old dose I was on. I’m hoping for better movement there as the thyroid gets back to normal. Losing weight when a person’s thyroid is low is like fighting against gravity!
Next step? Eating healthy breakfasts!
My next step is going to be working on good breakfasts. They need to be higher in protein to set the tone for the day. I used to be one of those people who hated breakfast. I now eat it, but I want it to be something I can do on auto pilot! My brain is pretty fuzzy in the morning. So learning a new breakfast habit will not be easy. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Developing a healthy body when it is overweight and has fallen into disrepair? It is not an easy task. My take away from this process is that I have had way too little empathy over the years for those in the middle of changing their eating habits/losing weight. The process involves a miriad of changes and habit adjustments. Those who are in the process need our love, support, prayer and empathy. I am only trying to lose 30 pounds. I can’t imagine trying to lose 100 pounds or more! It would be a mountain so high, I know I would need extra help.
Come to think of it, I need help now. And that may be a huge benefit as well. The realization that I need help, asking for it, and making use of the help. In these weight loss journeys, instead of being quiet about it, we might be wiser to ask for the support of our friends in the areas we feel the need of it. Maybe even in areas we don’t know we need help. Now that’s a thought isn’t it? It isn’t even very profound.
Why is it so difficult to ask for help?
It occurred to me, as I was looking for pictures to go with this post, that one of the problems with asking for help, particularly with white middle class americans, but certainly not limited to them, is that for many of us, we feel like asking for help is a sign of weakness. In a way it is, but it is a good sign. It shows we are aware of a weakness everyone else had already noticed!
Often, in our unhealthiness, we feel like a beggar asking for a handout when we ask for help. That is often why it is so difficult. We feel like we are putting ourselves, not only in a weak position, but one where we are destitute. We have no resources, we are out of work with no resources and are asking for a handout from others who have it all together. In terms of our relationship to GOD, that is totally true. We are the beggar with no resources.
It’s hard to ask GOD for help,
but almost impossible to ask other people!
But in terms of other people, we are all in the same boat. Before GOD, we are all destitute. Before our fellow human beings, we are all broken but we each have strengths we bring to each other. There is no one so destitute that he can’t bring something to a community to contribute something. It may be creativity, sense of humor, resourcefulness, or a hidden talent we were too busy to notice.
Those of us who are strong rarely consider that the weak can contribute something to us. When we are strong, we don’t see that we need the weak. But we do. In times of strength, we just don’t know it! We don’t find out until we are weakened…by illness, depression, grief, high mountains we can’t climb or a multitude of other events in our lives.
At some point,
we may actually welcome our weakness as a friend…
because we learned to ask for help in healthy ways!
Then we learn how much we need others who know what it is to be weak. That is when we learn that our strength was not as strong as we thought. And our new found weakness turns into strength as we learn to depend on a community of loving friends who wanted to help all along. We were just to “strong” to allow them to do it. So in that sense, our weakness turns into a gift. Certainly not one we wanted or sought after, but a gift nonetheless!
Where do you need to be more healthy?
Where do you need to ask for help?
What is keeping you from asking?
When I decided to try to start eating better breakfast the best thing I did was prepare ahead of time. What always held me up was that I don’t like to get up and cook first thing in the morning, but if I would make stuff at night or make enough of something that I could freeze it for later it worked well. Good luck on your continued journey 🙂 Visiting today from Fellowship Fridays
i think we are cut from the same piece of cloth on that one KC! thanks. that is what i’ll definitely have to do to make breakfasts work for me!
You go girl! Living healthy always makes me feel so much better – higher energy, clear mind, and a sense of accomplishment. One of my favorite breakfasts is Quinoa cereal (basically a replacement for oatmeal). I cook the Quinoa according to the package. Once done I put it in a bowl and add blueberries, sliced strawberries, half a banana sliced, some pumpkin/pepita seeds (for protein), honey and a dash of almond milk. It’s so good and takes 15 minutes! Also, before breakfast, I drink a cup of warm lemon water with a dash of sea/Pink Himalayan salt (and it must be these types of salts – table salt will dehydrate you). This will kick your metabolism up a notch. Lemon cleans out toxins in the body, warm water absorbs in the body much quicker, and salt raises your sodium level in the morning (the body naturally fights to raise your sodium level to get everything moving and lower your potassium levels which are high due to inactivity). I’m no expert, believe me. But, the lemon water definitely increased my metabolism and energy. Also, throw in healthy snacks between meals to prevent your body from going into starvation mode. Eating every 2-3 hours will help with that. When the body goes into starvation mode, everything you ate before will turn into fat. So eating a snack in between meals is a good to prevent that. You can do a hand full of almonds with dried cranberries, celery with almond butter, a boiled egg with a slice of cheese, and the list is endless. Hope this helps and keep up the good work!
thanks nifty betty:) those are helpful suggestions:)
Kudos to you for taking time to remake your habits and take control of your health! I, too, am on a journey–more of a tune up journey than anything else. I’m trying to lose 15 lbs and the hardest habit for me to form is the one that I know will help the most with lasting weight loss–incorporating weight training and interval training into my schedule. I’m been faithfully running and walking, but just doing cardio over and over again makes my heart my efficient but doesn’t necessarily do anything to burn fat :/. So, I’ve started up on the intervals and I’m going to drag out my T-25 workout video and do the three videos that focus on muscle building the most (I don’t have any weights/equipment at home, but I’ve read that doing body weight exercises works just as well).
i empathize with you anita! i never had to think about my weight until i was 50 when i was put on medication that caused me to gain weight and wasn’t warned. i ballooned 20 pounds in 6 months b/f i figured out what was going on! i learned how to lose weight on weight watchers that time but they keep changing the program that i get lost in all the numbers. i have given up and figured that i will have to figure out another way to do it this time.
it didn’t help that i was working 3-11, then moved and now am finally getting settled in enough that i can work on it. i have lived in denial too long. it is hard work isn’t it? when we get on the other side of this, we’ll be happy we did it…it is just learning what will work for us.