Health Smart Challenge - final installment!

Week 5 – Day 35 (Tuesday 24th February 2009):

Had a pretty good week this week. I exercised daily but really did have a better sense of balance. I jogged 4 times and walked twice. I also did some yoga at home using a DVD I purchased. I feel that I am getting better at taming my negative thoughts and even though they still come fast and furious at times, I am learning that it’s important to try and put some perspective on both the thoughts and the situation at hand.

I have found yoga has been a relaxing way to clear the mind. I’m hoping it is not a phase. It makes me feel clear in the head and it’s during these times I feel happy and healthy and better able to rationalise my negative thoughts.

I flipped through some old Health Smart mags today and found that having changed the style of magazine I read has also provided me with some clear mindedness. Previously I have read magazines, which focus primarily on weight loss and are filled with images of bodies I will and could never have. Reading articles about health, vitality and well being are much more soothing to my own soul. Today I re-read an article I had flagged some time back, from the June-July 2008 issue titled “Think Thin” learn the tricks. I’m really trying :o)

Week 6 – Day 40 (Monday 01st March 2009):

I’m getting very close to the end of this challenge and whilst I know it can take 6 weeks to break a habit, I believe this one may take me a little more time. Some days I feel like my goal of learning to really love myself is not attainable in this lifetime. The thought depresses me and rather than seeing it as motivation, or indeed, ammunition to change, I seem to let it beat me. I seem to allow myself to turn the thoughts around in my mind. Feel their negative affects, let them momentarily damage my soul and rob me of the beauty I should be able to see in my unique personality.

Perhaps though I have achieved more than I am giving myself credit for in this time frame, and indeed in the last few years. If I dissect my thoughts, break them down and rationalise them, I can deduce the following:

1: I have lost a significant amount of weight and maintained that loss for some time now.

2: I have changed my lifestyle and no longer lead anything that resembled the sedentary sloth-like one of the past.

3: I have learnt that the key to my success is action. I know that motivation is fleeting, but yet I have choice every day! 9 times out of ten I use that choice for good, and to my advantage.

4: I am setting a good example for my children. I feed my family nutritious and wholesome food and regularly display to them the benefit and need for physical activity.

5: I am TRYING to love myself and that in itself is a greater effort than I’ve made in recent times. I recognise my thoughts and feelings towards my body and subsequent body image are like a roller coaster – up and down from one day (or moment) to the next. I also recognise the real goal lies in learning to change that and taking the steps to do so – no matter how long the journey at hand.

Synopsis – Thursday 19th March

It’s been a few weeks since I ceased my journaling (no matter how infrequent) for the Health Smart Challenge. That said I felt the need to provide a final statement into my initial goals and the outcomes of these.

When I began the challenge I hadn’t really identified (despite suggestions to do so) the exact way in which I would go about reaching my goals. I looked at the entry form sent to me and initially I had thought I would aim to lose 5 kilos (my eternal quest). But then after thinking about it a little more, I decided that for me weight loss is actually only a very small piece of this journey that I have been on for what feels at times like forever.

I guess the thing is I know I CAN lose weight. I have proven that much to myself. What I feel like I haven’t been able to get a full handle on, is the self-esteem I have attached to my body image. Being a twin does play a bigger role in this than I have previously acknowledged, but once I did it almost became an overwhelming reality. Sexy Twin is thinner and always has been. Why then do I continue to put so much weight in my image by comparison to hers? I have taken away from this exercise the desire to let go of these issues and thoughts. We are different people. Period.

I’ve learnt a few more things over the past few weeks.

1: Body image is almost shamefully important to me. I feel shallow simply writing that – but there it is – in black and white. It’s not so much important to me in a ‘defines who other people are’ kind of way, but more that I have somehow allowed it to define me. I have unwittingly tied so much of myself and my self-belief, into the external aspects of who I am. I realise now I have done myself a great disservice in doing so. However, I have also learnt from this 6 week challenge that simply writing the positive things about myself (such as I did in week 3 and 6) demonstrated to me the many things about myself, which need not be connected to the number on the bathroom scales or the tag size of my slightly snug jeans.

2: I am not a failure if I do not run every day. Even as I write those words I want to believe them ALL the time, not just right now, yesterday and possibly tomorrow – but every day! I know from week 4 that when I placed words of affirmation on my bedroom mirror – it helped. I need to do this with my mindset daily. I need to replace the negative, self-criticising thoughts, with positive affirming thoughts that boost my self-esteem daily.

Until undertaking this challenge I had not placed anything affirming on my walls or mirrors. In fact in High school I did the opposite and wrote messages to myself telling myself I was fat and to stop eating in an effort to get thin. An action I can now see has had long-term negative affects on me. Never again will I record such negative and untrue thoughts. Instead I am going to continue to write affirming statements and read them with belief!

3: I am seeing a psychologist. After making the first phone call and being told I would need to wait for her annual leave to end, I thought that was the first and final step. However, in light of my changes and the recognition I WANT to change as well as need to, I phoned back and had my first of possibly many appointments in early March. I will continue down this path and feel that even if this is the most significant step this 6-week challenge presented to me, it was a worthwhile and strong step for me, a serial doubter, to take. I feel as though I have empowered myself, given myself permission to really deal with the negative thoughts and equip myself with further tools to love myself and change my mindset – for good!

4: I want to last but certainly not least, remind myself and also demonstrate the changes I HAVE made in terms of my weight loss. I must confess that whenever I look back on my ‘before & after’ pictures I wonder what on earth is wrong with me that I fail to see what I really do know others can – I have changed and if I continue on this path of mental well being and emotional self belief, In time I will really see what others do also. I am beautiful inside and out and I want to exude the confidence of someone who knows her contribution to the world around her is incredibly worthwhile and far from based on the size of my jeans! To me that is what real health is about, smart health. Embodying mind, spirit and body!