Clean Slate.

People talk about Falling Off The Wagon all the time.  I don't talk about it much, but it's mostly because I am too busy actually doing it and wondering how to get back on to verbalize.  It can be with anything.  Long-term goals, short-term goals.  A burnt dinner.  An overdue credit card bill.  We fall off the straight and narrow all the time, and spend the better part of our day stewing and wondering if it's possible to make things right again.
What we don't realize is that the time spent harping on ourselves and convincing ourselves of our utter lack of worth could be better spent just taking the next step forward.  It sounds so simple.  And it is.  If we let it be.

I am notorious for doing this with my "diet"... or lack-there-of.  I do well with breakfast, but semi-binge at lunch (because.... how could I possibly choose between leftover pizza and fresh stuffed mushrooms?? Must have both!), then spend the rest of the day eating whatever I get my hands on because I can "start again tomorrow."  I let my temporary lapse of self-control, my lapse of stillness run the rest of my day.  It takes a heap full of perfectly acceptable minutes and hours and turns them into a pile of weary, sad moments spent contemplating just how sad my poor little gut is, and just how weak my control is.  I eat ice cream after dinner, even though it will make my stomach stretch to a level of discomfort so high that my normal, sane brain cells wonder why it is that I like to knowingly and willingly put myself through it again.  But... I'm starting again tomorrow.  Today is ruined.  May as well get it over with.  Drown my sorrows, so to speak.

I've done this with my exercising as of late as well.  I have a stress fracture in my foot, which has made it so I can't run, do yoga, or even walk long distances.  So therefore, I don't do anything.  I have fallen off of the path when it comes to my normal routine, and instead of looking around and seeing what else there is, I cave in on myself and throw myself a grand old pity party.  How much easier our lives would be if we just lived each day instead of groaning about how hard living actually is. 

What I need to realize is that people mess up.  Things happen.  And you don't have to wait for the water to settle to make a change.  The sun rising does not mean that your slate is clean.  Your slate can be cleaned the very moment you make a mistake.  So I had two days worth of calories in one sitting.  Oops.  Did it taste delicious?  Sure did.  Do I need to spend the whole day being a garbage disposal because I have a stain on my record?  Silly.  I need to enjoy the splurge, then start again... that very second.  Not the next day.  Not after the weekend.  Not when I get home from vacation.  Now.  Otherwise the hole will be 50 feet deeper than it needed to be by the time I make the decision to really start.  And, sure, hard work is good for the soul, but we have enough of that in our lives already to be nonchalantly adding weariness that could have been avoided.

The problem though, at least for myself, is the actual desire to make the change.  I talk a big talk when it comes to my weight loss journey.  When I made the decision to get healthy however many months ago, it felt different.  It felt heavy.  It felt like it had some substance, some credit to it.  And I think that's been a huge, if not the biggest, factor of the success I have had so far.  I fell into a routine, and I stayed there.  I had made the decision, not for my kids or for my jean size, but for me.  So I could let my body be what it so desperately wanted to be.  The desire was there, so the pounds fell off.

But I have an engine that burns out.  That's been the case my whole life.  I get excited about something, do really well, then burn out.  I have so many half-done projects in my house it's embarrassing.  And since I have been in the States, I can feel that drive burn out.  I'm not sure if it's because I am not in my own home with my own food and my own routine, or if it's something more.  Right now I am excited to get back so I can hop back into Weight Watchers and hopefully turn the tide on the weight that is slowly creeping back on. 

But there's the rub.  When I get home.  It needs to happen now.  I need this to be a change that I carry with me.  Because Lord knows with the life that we lead, I am never in one place very long.  So how do I nail it down? Make it permanent?  That's what I need to find out.  That's what I need to uncover.  I think it would be a lovely gesture if I saved myself the trouble of picking up after my poor attitude. 

Ladders.

I have a stress fracture in my foot.  That sucks.

Moving on...

I'm happy to report that the changes that gripped me in my last post are still holding on tightly, sinking their claws into my chest a little further each day.  That makes it sound like an unwelcome change, but it's not.  It's just that it's just so dang hard to keep my focus on the things that matter, because the things that don't matter are so much prettier.  They flutter around, catching my glance, dropping sparkles in my eyes that instantly fill me with a feeling of more, while the things that matter sit solidly still, reflecting not a sparkle, but a heaviness and a sureness, one that's dull but prominent, filling me, not instantly, but gradually with a feeling of enough.  Enough stills me, leaves me in a silence that makes it possible to see clearly.  More drives me mad, rippling the water so all I can see are millions of reflections everywhere instead of the stillness that sits just beneath. 

I feel like the culture that we are immersed in is constantly driving us up a ladder, up the rungs to the Next Best Thing.  Keep moving forward.  Get the latest model.  Try the latest technique.  To stop and be content with where you are at is to be outdated, sedentary, unmotivated.  Lazy.  And while there is a certain stillness that can be classified as laziness, not all stillness is the kind that gathers dust. 

I am very susceptible to advertising.  I am consumer.  I have been known to purchase a book based solely on its cover.  I love everything Apple.  I see commercials for a restaurant and put it on my list of things to do.  (That little trait is greatly magnified while I am pregnant.)  I am ok with my weight, but my ears still perk and my eyebrows still raise when I hear about the latest method to shaving off those last few pounds.  There are just so many things to get.  So many things to do.  It's impossible to keep up.

And yet we continue to try so hard.

Being in the States for the last few weeks has been more eye-opening than I was anticipating it being.  Especially with my eating habits.  I eat like I have a tendency to do my shopping.  I need to eat the Next Best Thing, and I need to finish it because otherwise I am wasteful.  I need to eat these fries even though I've eaten fries at every other meal in the day because these are different.  They are new and shiny and what if they are the best fries ever? And I just let them sit!  What a waste!  And I will eat this ice cream NOW even though I could wait but what fun is waiting when I can have it NOW? 

So I am working on being still when I eat.  Being still when I shop.  Letting the ripples wear themselves out so I can see clearly.  Letting my will and mind exercise the power that they do indeed have over the stuff that surrounds me every day.  I hope that it will only take a few times of overcoming the voice that is roaring more more more now now now to help me see that it can be done.  I imagine that voice as a roaring lion, yelling at the top of his lungs.  It's scary at first, startling, making you want to jump into action.  But my will and my strength are the lioness that is hiding in the brush, silently watching, not wasting her energy on yelling and making a show.  I find her to be more powerful, because she sits and waits.  You aren't surprised when the roaring lion attacks, but when the lioness strikes, it's one of power and strength that you didn't see coming. 

So be still.  Wait.  Let the noise subside, and see what is left.  Listen to the subtleness.  Listen to the calm.  I believe that when we learn to do that, it will be so much more gratifying than seeing the useless rungs of the ladder pile beneath us.