Tag: Guilt

Health is a Journey, Not a Destination

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Making A Lifestyle You think it’s a diet. You think it’s a cleanse. You think it’s not eating carbs. You think wrong. Health is a lifestyle. It’s a complete way of living. Health is from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed and the hours in between. It’s a 24/7 practice. It’s eating, drinking, breathing, and heart-beating. You can eat whatever you want, you can workout whenever you want, and you can socialize in any way. A healthy lifestyle means doing those things with health in mind.

I eat cookies, pizza, sushi, cake, brownies, and dark chocolate. I take days off from working out. I sit in my pajamas all day on sunday and watch tv. I eat chinese food once a week. Does this sound healthy? Not at all! Here is a health-ifying breakdown:

  • I eat organic cookies I either bake at home, or buy in small portions. 
  • I eat organic vegan pizzas that are single-serving, or made from home on a pita. 
  • I go to sushi once a month or less. 
  • If I eat cake, it’s a mug cake that I make in the microwave. Again, single serving. 
  • Same goes for brownies. (Why have a huge pan sitting around to devour?) 
  • Dark chocolate is afforded to one small square a day, or in the form of Raw Cacao powder to make hot cocoa or chocolate milk.
  • Rest days are essential to rebuild and recover. Taking an extra one is always okay.
  • My chinese food is made from Gardein Mandarin Chick’n and Quinoa.
  • Sunday is a rest day, so I’m allowed to do what the hell I want!

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Have Your Cake and Eat It Too You see? You can have all those things if you just healthify them! I have a major sweet tooth. I am a fat kid in a health nut’s body. I love my sweets, but I always keep health in mind when eating them. If I go overboard, I’ll be sure to make up for it in the gym. Aim for balance.

Your life is important. Your vitality, wellness, vigor, energy, and spirit is important. You deserve the best because you are the best. 

I may indulge in all those things, but guess what? It’s OKAY. I’m healthy and you can be too.

Find time, at least an hour a day, to devote to moving. If you can’t get to a gym, do some body exercises during one of your TV shows. Squats, Push-ups, Dips, Mountain Climbers. Those four things will shape you up just fine. They will get your body, digestion, and metabolism moving more efficiently.

I know it’s hard to change your frame of mind. Change is a frightening thing. But if you don’t change how you look at losing weight and gaining health today, then you won’t ever get there. You will continue the same behavioral patterns and end up where you started, or worse, heavier and sicker.

If you need any help, just ask. My mission is to fight obesity and that starts with one person at at time.

If being overweight isn’t your healthy lifestyle issue, what is? Tell me below and inspire the next blog. Thanks for reading.

Best Health,

Nicole

Let Go

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Let go. Let go of your past. Let go of your anger. Let go of your anxiety. Let your worries float free.

You’ve got to let go to move on. The reason we fail in life is because we are holding onto something that is bringing us down. Would you stay tied to an anchor if it was drowning you?

If you don’t let go of something that is taking up your life, you won’t have room for anything fresh and new.

Cravings, emotions, and attachments can anchor you to that sugary donut, white bread, and want to eat. A love lost, death, departure, and uncertainty can anchor you to not want to eat.

They are making you depressed and pushing you further down into the deep, dark ocean of emotion where you can’t breathe. The past life you lived, the habits that consumed you, and the present issues that are circling in your brain are keeping your mind and body from becoming healthy.

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Personal Tidbit.  The idea of a perfect body has always been the anchor drowning my ability to have ultimate wellness. The obsession started around age 14 when we all go through that awkward pubescent stage of life. I was in a very rough patch. My parents were going through a divorce that was going on 4 years, I didn’t have a place to call home, and I needed control. The only thing I could control was my diet. I decided I didn’t like everything I was forced to endure, so I stopped the one thing I could: eating.

After many years of nutrition courses, vegetarianism, veganism, and health-nuttiness, I still have issues of wanting the perfect level of health, the perfect body (which is constantly changing), and the perfect life. It’s not healthy, and I try to break this obsession with more health.

My way of dealing and coping with it is to eat the utmost perfect diet: organic, low-fat, full of antioxidants, plant-based, etc. And to be a personal trainer: obligated to having a muscular physique, toned abs, and perfect skin. I’m working on accepting the body I have and letting go of the perfect anchor.

We all have our own issues we need to let go. I have mine, you have yours. But we can’t let them destroy us. We can’t let them drown us.

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We must choose to let go of them. It’s no easy feat. It may be a lifelong battle. All we can do is work on letting go: one day at a time, one emotion, one memory, one loss, just one at a time. We can do rituals to make ourselves well, like yoga, meditation, and self-love. We can take medications to block out those obsessive thoughts, but that won’t make our body any healthier. In the end, we must realize, breakthrough, and let go. Untie yourself from the anchor drowning you.