Healthy lifestyles, for me, was a concept that lived on the other side of a huge wall for most of my life. Who were those people? I did not understand what motivates people to do things that bring physical pain like working out. Workouts done right made me cry deeply from a place of pure neglect. Refraining from foods that comforted me made me miss heat like my life had turned to cold.
When the answer came one desperate day in my mid-thirties that I may need to jump the wall to this other side and find out more about living, I thought it would just be a quick visit with the side effect of weight loss. I did not know I would continue to walk with these people. They move on the other side. They stay moving.
I am in this place now, constantly moving, but ironically I am sitting more than ever. I have learned to be in the moment, to sit with everything. I sit with the pain of the workout. I sit with the nostalgia linked to comfort foods I miss. I care for myself more than ever in these moments, knowing that I need sweet replacements for the sweets I have lost.
It’s okay to care for yourself in a lifestyle change like you are grieving because you are.
You are undoing years of learned coping strategies. The emotions that come with this are not easy!
Sometimes I think I may go back to the other side of the wall. I could eat whatever I want and never have to go to the gym on that side. That was fun and indulgent and so comfortable. I would have to pretend, though, that I had not learned how to care for and love myself and that I did not know any better. It would be the natural coping mechanism for having made such a digression. I do not think I could do that.
What is the answer for people like me who are always on the brink of quitting and running back over the wall?
Stay Immersed!! Park it. This is your new life.
I was worried that when I left my career that I would gain a ton of weight back. So I got a part time job at my gym where I can drink healthy smoothies and work out before I go home for the day. I also decided to go get my health coaching certificate and study emotional eating so that I could stay in the subject daily. I use my own tools for my business to get through moments of emotional eating and cravings regularly. I see my own health coach, also, who monitors my Macronutrient plan and weight loss.
There is no going back. I would have to shuck all that I have found in me if I threw in the towel, and I do not know what would be left. So whether or not I lose five pounds this month or even if I gain ten, this is me now. I live on the other side of the wall; the key word here is living.