Making a Come Back

Today, I begin a new beginning. 

My life has been a series of ups and downs. There are good days and bad days,  good times and bad times. I had a good long stretch of doing very well and being very successful at making a change in my life, but somehow I always manage to self-sabotage. I get to a place where I'm finally starting to make strides in getting my health back and I just completely lose it... Why do I do this??? I decided to do some research and found this article on self-sabotage to be really helpful. I'm the kind of person who likes to be in control of all situations and my health is one area where I never feel like I'm in control. I went so far as to develop an eating disorder in high school just to feel like I had control over it. I self-sabotage because failure in this area is familiar and it's comfortable. I've coped with failure for years... Success on the other hand.. that's new. Success is unfamiliar and it's scary and I always seem to feel like it's only a matter of time before I fail.. so I usually just find some way to tear down my accomplishments and revert back to my old ways so that I don't have to "prolong the inevitable."

I'm ready to shift my thought process this time. I'm going to stay current here with my progress so that I have something to ground me to my commitment. It's a never-ending process, but I'm so proud of myself for never giving up. Even when I'm down, I just keep fighting to move forward. That's such an important shift in my focus from before. I used to think that if I failed, I had failed and there was no going back. Now, I realize that success is in the ability to get back up and try again after you have failed. You can choose to be defined by your failures or you can choose to be defined by your courage in continuing to pursue the goals you've set for yourself despite your failures. That choice is completely up to you. Are you going to make a come back? Or are you going to accept defeat? 

For a long time, I've been watching The Biggest Loser on NBC and I've loved the stories and the people on the show are so inspiring. I always thought it would eventually give me the motivation I needed, but I never found a character that I could really and truly relate to. This season, there was a girl named Danni. She was beautiful, even though she was overweight, and I could see so much of myself in her. Insecure, scared, and somewhat lonely. Early on in the season, she lost all of her teammates and she was left fighting for her spot on the Biggest Loser ranch completely alone. She could have just given up completely and decided to accept defeat, but what happened next was one of the most inspiring come back stories in Biggest Loser history. Danni rose to the occasion. She fought like her life depended on it and she not only won almost every single challenge as a solo competitor, she managed to keep her spot on the ranch by just a hair at every single weigh in. She hung on by the skin of her teeth, pushed herself beyond what she thought she was capable of, and went on to win the entire show. Her transformation is incredible and her story resonated in me. I've always believed I could be an athlete, but I just resign myself to being a pretty, but heavy girl. I don't want to just be that girl who's comfortable being invisible; I want to be the girl I believe I am inside!

Today, I'm challenging myself to rise to the occasion and overcome my failures. Today, I'm writing my come back story and I challenge you to do the same. It's never too late for change and I'm determined to prove to myself that I can do it. 

First thing I'm going to do to jump start this new goal is to give up something I love... Fast Food. I'm busy constantly and I turn to something fast so that I don't need to put any extra effort into my life to prepare something... Not anymore. If I need something fast, I will go to the grocery store and get a salad. No excuses. This is going to be tough, but I'm ready. I'm mentally ready and I'm determined to find success and revel in it... Who's with me??

Training for the Goal

I'm a runner. I'm a runner because I've been running every day for a week straight. 

Is this really true? Are you "something" because you just started doing it?  Can you decide that you are a painter by painting one picture? Or decide you are a musician because you played the guitar for five minutes?

I'm sure those who are reading this right now who actually are runners, painters, or musicians would say a huge resounding "NO!" Why is this? What makes you "something?"

Dedication. Time invested. Passion.

You can't have all of that stuff if you've barely begun doing something. It's just not possible. So what CAN you say? Can you say that you are "practicing" to BECOME  runner? or BECOME a painter? or BECOME a musician? ABSOLUTELY! You aren't something just because you say you are. You're something because you've put in the time and effort and dedication to it.

This year I have decided to improve my fitness by running and working out. I've have been run/walking at least a mile every day for the past week. It's been a struggle and a challenge since day one, but I'm training hard. My goal is to eventually run a 5K, which is roughly about 3.5 miles. The rec center where I have been running at has an amazing track on the top floor. The first day was really discouraging. I ran one lap and was winded and out of breath and quite frankly I wanted to just throw in the towel right then and say "I'm no good at this! How could I possibly get any better?!?"

I didn't though. I walked a lap and then ran a lap and continued in that fashion for about 8 laps. I believed firmly that each lap was a quarter mile and as the week progressed I was able to go from one lap to two laps and today, a week later, I ran four consecutive laps in a row. I was absolutely elated. I felt such a HUGE sense of accomplishment and was so happy I almost cried.

Then I found out from a member of the staff that one lap...was only 1/8th of a mile. My poor little heart just sank and that feeling of accomplishment started to dwindle. I had worked so hard!

I had lost sight of the fact that I was IMPROVING by HUGE strides. Even though it wasn't a mile, in one week I went from running one very winded and exhausted lap to running four consecutive laps without feeling winded at all. That's a major accomplishment and I'm still training. Just because I've worked at running for a little bit doesn't mean that I'm going to become a runner overnight! I have to put in the time and effort and dedication first.

Becoming Opportunistic

Something I have been embracing lately is taking advantage of opportunities for change, growth, or aspirations. Realizing I needed to take a year off from my education was not one of my happiest moments. I found myself feeling like I would be unable to keep up with the lives of my friends or be done with school in time to start my "real life"--whatever that means. It took its toll on me emotionally to make that decision. I knew it would be best for me financially, but what I didn't know was how empty my life would start to feel. 

After a few weeks of being out of school, I began to find myself in this never ceasing state of boredom and after awhile you really start to get depressed. How I hated being busy when I was, but then how I missed being busy when I wasn't! It took me awhile before I realized something very important in this life. TIME IS A GIFT.

I woke up one morning and decided that today was the day that I was no longer going to sit around moping and wishing I had something to do--I was just going to go out and do something! The first thing I decided to do was learn to play guitar. I had always wanted to learn to play, I just never had the time. I am a singer/songwriter of sorts and have constantly relied on other people to write music to my songs. Now *I* wanted to be the one to write the music to my songs...so, I made a spur of the moment decision to go to guitar center and drop $300 on a guitar so that I could "feel" my investment in learning it. I took advantage of all my time spent doing useless things to learn how to play the guitar...and after a few months of playing, I'm not half bad!

The next thing I decided to do was take up painting. I had taken a drawing class a few summers back and really enjoyed it. There was something relaxing about capturing the beauty in people and in objects and I found it to be something that really spoke to my soul. I had always thought about taking up painting, but had never really had the time--once again. So, I decided to just go to the store and pick up some paint supplies and get to it! I've already painted my first few rough paintings and I am really enjoying it. I feel like a part of ME can be captured through music and art and that's something that has been really rewarding. 

Something else on my list of things to do is take some horseback riding lessons. I absolutely love horses and there is nothing like the feeling of wind rushing through your hair as you cantor through winding trails. Every year since I was very young I have gone horseback riding at the Feast of Tabernacles, but I had never had the time to actually take lessons. It's just one more thing that I can take advantage of with this time that I have while I am young and full of energy.

Most important on my list of things to do with my time, is study the Bible. A few weeks ago, my mom and a close family friend decided that we were going to partner up in reading through the entire Bible in a year (and a couple days). Every day I have a reading that is assigned and then we all get together through email and discuss what we have learned from that reading selection. It's something that has definitely helped me keep my focus on God and I've also been spending time probing the Bible in search of realistic applications for what it talks about and also researching it to find the truth in it. There could not be a more practical application of seizing the moment like finding your purpose and solidifying your beliefs. Connecting with God and with others on this level has encouraged me and also inspired my creative approach to life. In everything I do, God has been in mind. He is the artist. I am just the paintbrush in his hand. 

Finding the positive side of taking time off school has really opened up my mind to this massive world of possibilities. I have never felt more connected to myself and I am finally doing the things I have always said I wanted to do. It's liberating and fulfilling and certainly keeps me busy in the best way possible.

My advice to you today is just to recognize that time is precious. Don't wait until tomorrow to do the things that you can do today. Find your passions, ignite your fire, and run with it without hesitation. Seize the moment. You never know when you won't have the time to do the things you've always longed to do and you don't want to regret not having done them when time runs out.

Finding an Identity

It's been awhile since I posted last, but so much has been happening the last few weeks. I have found that I sometimes enjoy losing myself by keeping myself occupied with complicated projects. I just got back from a week long church event called "The Feast of Tabernacles" and I felt that, though there were many moments of fun, I got myself preoccupied with responsibilities and consequently lost out on the most important aspect of that holy time--recentering myself with God.

I find that's true of my everyday life as well. Rather than spend time getting to know my creator, the one person who can truly disclose my true identity to me, I preoccupy myself with things to keep myself busy and pass the time. Rather than having a meaningful prayer or Bible study, I focus on worldly issues and worldly projects. Lately I've found myself so wrapped up in my own plans that I almost forgot about God completely! How can I do that so easily?? In turn, I lose my identity...and what makes me real. 

The focus of this blog is about recentering yourself--coming back to a place where you feel yourself shining through rather than just facets of you. When you think about your life 5 years from now, where do you want to be? WHO do you want to be? and Can you let go and let God? These are questions I struggle with daily and it's probably why a lot of things don't come as easily for me. I'm trying so hard to please everyone around me, including myself, and I have completely ignored pleasing my creator. That's not to say that I don't feel as though he is proud of me. I think I've done many things in my life for Him to be proud of. I just want to know that my heart and soul and mind are focused on him all the time rather than just some of the time. I want to get back to feeling comfortable in the life and the body that God created especially for me...

Recently I've been doing a bit of studying with my mom. We're trying to read through the Bible in a year and I've been finding myself much more in tune with the research aspect of things this time around. I'm not just reading it to say I read it; I'm reading it to say I know it and understand it! Something I'm passionate about when studying the Bible is specifically finding the woman's purpose in God's plan. I guess I feel that's where I can find my identity and my purpose as it relates to God. Reading through Genesis and the creation of man and woman, I decided to research the physical differences between males and females. 

I started looking to see if there was any indication of Eve being created from Adam scientifically. That was a bust...at least as far as it relates to the rib cage! AND scientifically males and females are pretty similar in skeletal structure. The main differences are the pelvic bones and that wasn't exactly what I was interested in for this particular study. I wanted something deeper!! So...what I came across was more intimate and more spiritual than I  initially bargained for.

I found a website about the "ART" of males and females. It was a website about how to draw men and women and what I found most crucial to feeding my curiosity on the subject was that the physical structure of a woman's body is much more intricate than a man's. Her body has soft curves and has to be drawn much more precisely than a man's in order to get the same effect. There are a lot of ins and outs as to distinguishing a female from a male when it comes to the art of drawing--and I'm not talking about cartoon women with big giant boobs and teeny tiny waists, I'm talking about REAL women. It's much more complicated. 

I think that's what really hit home for me is that it was a much more complex idea that God had for creating a woman. He made Adam the same way he made everything else, but a woman was special...and I think the fact that it takes a certain kind of complex thinking to understand women emotionally tells me it only makes sense that it would take complex thinking to understand a woman's body physically! It takes a skilled artist to create a lifelike woman and that's exactly what God is--a skilled artist.We, as women, were created with a special purpose and we are unique compared to any other species that God created. How AWESOME is that?? Women are the heart and soul of God--the intimate, emotional, nurturing and loving aspects of the Lord our God. We were meant to showcase those wonderful and finite details of our creator. There is no greater identity and purpose than that!!

This might have been a tangent and a bit random, but I think this aspect of identity and finding yourself and your purpose is what really helps bring home the idea of making successful changes in your life. You have to know yourself...and to know yourself, you must know God. I think the same is true of men; they were created with a unique purpose. 

So here is my thought for the day... Find out who you are through God and everything you dreamed will become a reality.  Be vulnerable with God and be vulnerable with others because it is through YOU that others may see God.

Finding a Balace

I have been finding it extremely difficult to find a balance between eating healthy and exercising regularly. Challenges seem to hit me everyday with trying to get better with money and my health. I enjoy shopping for pleasure and also eating for pleasure, so taking those things away can really be a difficult process. The important thing I have been trying to remind myself is that just because I don't always do well doesn't mean that I have failed. 

This week I have committed myself to working out lightly at least once a day. I heard it said that committing to something small is easier than committing to something big, so that is what I think I will do to jump start my new plan for my life. Small changes are more successful than big changes because it is so easy to get down on yourself when you don't meet the expectations you have set for yourself, especially if the expectations are already difficult to meet. I think I will apply the same concept to my diet. I think I will try to start everyday with a healthy breakfast. It's a small step, but it will help form a good habit in the long run and once I am committed to that I can move on to other aspects of my life.

The biggest thing I am learning now is patience. I know that I need to take things slowly and not get discouraged because that tends to feed negative energy and only make things worse. I am not a failure because I give in one meal of the day and eat some chicken tenders! I am not a failure because I bought a new shirt! I just need to make sure that I don't frequent my mistakes and make sure that I learn from them and improve my habits along the way. Everyday is a new day and a new start and I WILL be successful!

So what little steps will you be taking today towards changing the rest of your life?

Challenges with Committing

We have spent the past few days making valient efforts to shop smarter financially and health wise. An assortment of cost effective healthy options was purchased in attempt to curb our desires for expensive retaurant food. The only problem with that is that it doesn't take away the cravings for the bad. My first day went extremely well. I started the day with a delicious healthy breakfast of whole grain wheat toast and honey, plain scrambled eggs cooked in olive oil, and tomato slices with cottage cheese. Snacks throughout the day included whole grain pita and hummus, string cheese, raisins, and beef bites. Dinner that night was chicken with a homade garlic and balsalmic vinegar dressing and before we ate we went for a nice jog around our neighborhood. All in all it was a pretty successful first day!

Unfortunately, our second day didn't go quite as well... I woke up late and had a hectic morning and didn't end up eating anything until around 3:00 when my boyfriend and I decided to go out to Olive Garden. I went there with every intention of ordering just a salad, but chicken alfredo just sounded SO much better! So.. I gave in to temptation and ate an extremely delicious plate of chicken alfredo, full of fat and salt and everything that God made delicious..and not so great for you.. I only made it through half of the plate, so I brought the rest to work and ate that for a late dinner. An entire day of pasta doesn't exactly make for a good day of healthy eating. However, I did manage to not drink any soda yesterday or today so I guess I should give myself a little bit of credit!

It's hard to go from such a good day to a terrible day and not feel discouraged. We all want to do our best everyday, but sometimes we fall short. Someone once told me that the best thing to do when trying to start a new lifestyle is to keep trying, even when you fail. If you do bad one day, don't stress about it. Move forward into the next day and try harder to make it a success. You can't let your mistakes make you give up on your goals. So that's what I'm going to try and remember for the rest of this week. I can conquer this! I don't need cheeseburgers and pasta and pizza to make myself feel good. I am not defined by the foods I eat, I am defined by the person God created me to be! He didn't design me to eat foods that will eventually kill me. He designed me to live as long as possible and as healthy as possible and my true self can't shine as brightly when I don't feel well because of the food I eat.

So here's to another day! May tomorrow be a success!

Starting Fresh

Being a young twenty-something girl in this crazy and hectic world we live in today has definitely taken it's toll on my mind, body, and soul. I am becoming aware of myself more deeply than I ever have and realizations about my life are starting to take the front seat in the vision of my future. The consequences of my choices as a teenager, good and bad, are ripping at my psyche and pulling me in all different directions. So where do I go from here?

As a blossoming teenage girl, my father walked out on my family. My emotional state became fragile and every shred of hope I had for a positive future came crashing down around me. I felt like I had lost all control of my life and my destiny and the heartache I faced in the years to come became unbearable. My first serious relationship ended in disaster. He didn't love me or care about me and he left my life just as easily as he came into it. I began to hate myself and couldn't find anything about me that I even liked. As a result, I quickly fell under the crushing weight of self-doubt and began starving myself as a last stitch effort to gain control back. 

I'll never forget the day that my mom told my step-dad I was all skin and bones. It's not exactly what you want to hear when going to the first high school dance you've been to since the boy you were madly in love with dumped you. I realized then that I had a problem. I wasn't gaining any control back. I was just losing myself deeper in the abyss that had become the world I lived in and if I wanted to crawl out of it, the only way that could happen was if I let go off all the lies I'd let myself believe in and get back to being the person that I knew was worthy of love. So I ate.

Flash forward to a few years later and my next serious relationship is with a control freak who can't bare to think about the idea that I have friends other than him and I basically ate myself into oblivion and gained 40lbs. Having a metabolism that was slowed down by starvation didn't help anything and knowing how thin I used to be was constantly on my mind. Reminders of how ugly and fat I felt stayed ingrained on my body in stretch marks and pockets of fat and every time I saw them I would be reminded of how much the person in the mirror was not someone I liked. I realized after two long years of dating this terrible person that I deserved better than him and I decided to change my life once again...

After dumping the man who had once thought he could control every aspect of my life, I felt free. I felt like I had the world at my fingertips and for once in my life I was going to be somebody. I dumped the weight that I had gained rather quickly, but the stretchmarks still served as a reminder of where I had come from. I turned to God this time, though. I prayed he would give me the strength I needed to make a better life for myself and that he would lead me to the right person to compliment my dreams and desires. And then I met a man.

There was something innately different about this man that I had met. He had a sense of direction and goals he was ready to pursue and a stability that was lacking in every other person I had ever met. He was religious and outgoing and comfortable in his own skin and it was something I longed for. We instantly connected and quickly fell in love. Being with him was constantly an opportunity to learn about myself and to grow in my faith and to challenge my ideas of what was possible. It was a fresh start.

Today we've been together a year and a half and are still completely in love in every way... but now we are facing new life choices and lifestyle changes that need to be made. Together we are looking for a fresh start...and this blog is going to chronicle my experiences with finding myself, finding a purpose, and changing my life for the better.

I'm ready for a new chapter. I'm ready to make a fresh start. I'm ready to change the direction my life takes so that it can have a better ending. Are you?