Tag: healthy-living

Reframe and Reclaim

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JenReframe

Rejection, no matter what your field, sucks. For the purposes of this post. I will approach it from the field of the actor.

The five stages of grief look a little like this.

Denial- “I must have heard the message wrong. I nailed that audition, they must have mixed me up with someone else.
Anger- “How dare they not cast me. I am awesome.”
Bargaining- “Well maybe they wanted to cast me but some political machinations got in the way”
Depression- “why even try? Look, I went for it and didn’t get it. I must not be good enough to get that part. They must know something I don’t”
Acceptance- “I didn’t get the part”

I realized something during this last cycle of Grief. Its all in how you frame it. For example, the picture you see here is me eagerly anticipating my po-boy sandwich and how excited I am to eat it. I choose to remember that feeling and not how I felt after it turned out to not be so good (didn’t think that was possible) and the fun I had with my husband later in the day.

Further, I choose to remember that he was willing to take that picture not that he hates to take pictures and refused to be in my pictures.

I think a lot of people would say that I live life looking through rose-colored glasses. I actually do see life the way it really is, I just choose to frame it through a rose-colored lens.

All of us have something in our past we are unhappy that happened to us. It is vital to not let it define you. So I say this to you. Reframe and Reclaim it as a learning experience or take something away from it that makes it yours, not something that happened to you. Happen to it. Take it back.

Think about it!

Change one thing. Change Everything.

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Dear Readers, Today is the day of my week I look forward to the most. Today is cheat day on my diet. Most days I am (along with my husband) eating a paleo diet and I experience the joy of weight loss, energy and overall good health forsaking all those foods that my former fat girl self loved and adored. How did I get here?

I gave up soda. It sounds harder and yet was easier than I thought.

I work in a wonderful place that offers free sodas as one its many, many perks but they don’t have my favourite soda so I justified it like that. I said, okay well they don’t have what I want so I will decide to do without it. After a week without it, I no longer thought about it.

The next thing I gave up was chocolate and the same thing happened. I no longer thought about it after not having it all the time and so on. After we had adapted to the paleo lifestyle for a month, we had a glorious meal full of all the foods we loved and had temporarily given up. It was delectable and oh so very choice. I remember that meal and it was one night over a year ago.

Today, though it is cheat day, I am actually planning to only cheat with one meal instead of three, baby steps, people!

Expand your imagination, and find one thing that you have been talking about doing something about  it, today!

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness, concerning all acts of initiative (and creation). There is one elementary truth in ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

Do it, and watch what happens.

 

Last place is asleep…

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This morning I had a breakthrough in my workout routine. It should be noted this has been followed by two weeks of inconsistent working  making lots of excuses for it. That’s okay, I am giving myself grace for the past, but its important to note that sometimes just showing up and making the effort is worth mentioning.

I have a 5K I am walking/running on 3/30/2014 and the last time I did one of these it was in January. However, as my loving and math centric husband pointed out, every time you work out and do 3.2 miles or more, you have done a 5K. (I love that man) He has vision and can see what I could not which is that I am accomplishing my goal each time I work out. I couldn’t see that because I am so focused on getting up to 4 miles, or 1 mile in less than 20 minutes.. I am gaining on each of those goals but could not see that I have already accomplished so much. So, today, I got to minute 2 of the running, (for those not keeping score I have been alternating walking 2 minutes and running 2 minutes for about a month now. I said, “I think I can for run for another minute.” and then I did.

I went back and looked and its been walking the whole time to running 30 seconds, walking 30 seconds and then a minute and then two and now three. So, I am feeling very accomplished at the moment and I think its important to take stock of that.

I also want to remind myself when I DO NOT have a good day working out, its just one day closer to meeting another goal down the road and that road is filled with baby step after baby step of getting up, working out and getting up and showing up because remember, Last place is asleep, even if you just show up and suit up, you are doing better than someone who didn’t show up at all.

Where do you need to show up today?

It’s all in the numbers… really

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So if you read my blog faithfully, you know numbers and I share a fractious relationship. I have been working actively to make this relationship better. I think I may have finally hit on something “numbers” and I can agree on. Ready?

Here are some numbers to think about. Most of them make me smile.

13- The first time I thought about being fat

19- My first grown up job

24- The winter I went to Italy and discovered I love the water and getting lost in the streets

31-  The year I met the love of my life

36- The year I decided to start loving my body

It’s a measurement, and its a guidepost on your way to a goal. For example. Last week I weighted 253 pounds, Today, after exercise and diet, I weigh 251 pounds. So, somewhere in that time, I burned 7000 calories to lose 2 pounds. I am pausing here to celebrate that I lost two pounds and didn’t gain any weight.

Now, I have a glamorous photo shoot planned in 21 days to commemorate the occasion of my 37th birthday and a major shift in my attitude towards my body. I love my body and do not intend to abuse it any more but rather give it a constant source of love and respect and doing my best block out the voices that tell me I am a fat girl. I am not a fat girl and am getting healthier and loving my body more and more every day. The photo shoot idea came from having more confidence in myself and loving my body enough to say, yes, let’s honor the beauty and physical attractiveness that you are. The 1940s pinups are my favourite and reaching back to a bygone era when women wore hats (love you Grandma) and really embraced being women seems like a great way to celebrate this new found love.

See here for more details as a picture is worth a 1000 words… http://www.lonestarpinup.com/gallery.html

I hope to celebrate a weight loss of 75 pounds in one year. I have not gotten there yet, I have 20 days to go. I plan to continue eating the healthy paleo diet and exercising a hour three times a week to get to my interim goal of 235 pounds. I have 16 pounds to lose and plan to document my progress and am going to work like the dickens to get there but even if I don’t, I will have gotten closer just by trying.

Think about it.

Small Steps=Big Change

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So yesterday, It was the second day of the New Year and I am just bursting with ideas and excitement about all the things I want to accomplish this year.  I sat right down to write my list and the first thing on it was to get eight hours of sleep every night besting my previous record of 5-6 each night last year. I got home last night fully intending to do just that.

Guess what, I failed. So I didn’t even make it to the third day of the year without failing to keep a resolution and then I realized something. My body is used to sleeping 5-6 hours a night, not 8, so when I tried to go to sleep and gain 8 hours, my body said, Whoa, this is different, and I don’t like it so I rebel and sure enough, I got 6 hours of sleep last night. So I aim a little lower, tonight my aim is to get 6 and a 1/2 hours of sleep, so as to gradually work my way up to 8. I also think resolution has a lot of pressure to it, so I am going to start calling it an intention. I have been focusing on living my life intentional so this is certainly apropos. So here are my intentions and I plan to go after them with gusto but in increments. Along the way, I may discover other intentions or a need to tweak or adjust the intentions already in place. That’s okay, this is life, not a movie.

Intentions- Less tv. More Books
Less talk. More Action
Less phone calls. More face to face visits with coffee and tea!!
Less Facebook. More SLEEP

What do you intend to do this year?