8.2.11 A journey begins

I must jot down a few items as my day is filling up with all sorts of real estate oriented fires and I feel the enthusiasm I so profoundly felt last night slowing easing away.  I don't want to lose the enthusiasm and therefore will write down a few thoughts so I can later reflect and renew my new goals.  A 70 minute conversation with my older sister Kai left me with that feeling we often get after we go to a motivational seminar and feel full of will power to start a new habit, a new path.  Kai started a juicing diet June 5th and she has already dropped 33 pounds.  When she announced the new diet, something inside me knew this was it for her.  This was her last journey for weight loss.  In fact, I had this feeling before she told me anything.  Just a few days earlier other events were lining up in her life and I could see her growing stronger, getting focused.  I knew a weight loss journey would soon be ahead of her and I just KNEW this time around, it would be the one.  The one that ended in a healthy physique and new mental and emotional state of mind.  I myself have been through all sorts of personal and physical changes over the last year and a half.  Turning 36 this year has also brought me closer to 40 and I have been experiencing physical ailments that I am very frustrated with being I have always been a very healthy person.  With my 30 pound loss and gain and loss again over the last 18 months, I have also been grasping at a way of life that I can embrace.  One that motivates me to stay on tract, not yo-yo-ing and forth and one that will fit into my life as something I can maintain life-long... or at least until the end of this system.  The feeling of being fit and thin is an amazing feeling and I never want to lose it again.  It effects your thoughts that consume you 24/7.  Even while you are engaged in day to day activities, feeling good (or bad) about yourself sits as a object in the back of your mind.  Being unsatisfied with your weight drags you down, puts you in a bad mood and effects your relationships. You think of it from the moment you wake up and peer into the mirrror (or choose not to), while you are selecting your daily outfit chosen carefully to hide your fat, while you eat, work, drive.... On the opposite end, being satisfied with your physique doesn't remove that constant naggin in your mind, but the nagging object is now a feeling of excitement and satisfaction. My conversation with Kai included talking about her diet, how this time it was for real.  Her future journey of weight loss and both of us can find a way of life AFTER the diet that we can keep.  We talked about how it is so easy to gain confidence that we can adopt a healthy lifestyle but how our inner beings often make excuses for ourselves later--resulting in cheating ourselves, mentally giving up and then slipping back into the old lifestyle.  What would we do differently this time to ensure that won't happen again.  What our our weaknesses that we have to be aware of and how to we overcome them?  How can we business-minded sisters turn this into an opportunity to help others?  What could the future possibly hold for us?  After I hung up I was determined to support her in another way.  I too, would start a diet that is healthy.  I would make a conviction to stick to it until she also was done with her juicing that would end on her 40th birthday.  I would announce it to my FB friends so they could track my journey and support hence giving her a support group routing her on.  My diet would included a mostly vegetarian lifestyle to perhaps include dairy, eggs and fish (Lacto-Ovo Pescatarian).  The next mornings conversation I told her what I would do and that I would announce it.  Of course, that led into a business conversation and a brain storm of how we could turn this into a support group to encourage others and starting with our sister Bethanie.  I am excited about eating healthy and more excited about the way it will make me feel physically and mentally.  I am excited to start the blog that tracks our journey.  This is not a journey of just losing weight and eating right.  It is a journey of how making those changes also help us to be determined to make other necessary changes in our life that encompass our families and spirituality.  How meeting one goal in life often motivates you to make others.  It's about growth and opportunity.  Being happy with who we are and having no regrets.  Being joyful and loving ourselves and the people in our lives that means so much to us.