Reflections on an article about sobriety...

Blogger Kelly Fitzgerald just posted an article on her blog called "A Year Without Alcohol" where she discusses seven major differences she has noticed after being alcohol-free for a year. Even though I am nowhere near a year free of unhealthy food, a few of her changes really resonated with me:


2. I'm Just Beginning to Understand Who I Really Am

While I'm not going to rehash all she says (I highly encourage you to check out her article), I completely understood her feeling of discovering herself all over again. Personally, I think I have always hidden, coped, and found comfort in food, and so as I try to soothe myself in other ways, I am realizing that when I'm not in a carb and sugar induced fog, I really don't know much about myself. This is both a very exciting and terrifying thought!

3. Alcohol (aka "Unhealthy Food" for me) Was Not Fun For Me Anymore

The more I look at my relationship with food, the more frustrated I get that I am still enslaved by something so small and seemingly insignificant. My head knows that my actions are not helping me, yet I still have some weird magnetic attraction to the stuff that is so awful for me. I kind of want to shake myself and say, "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?" More on this in #7

7. I'm Not Perfect, and that's OK

I am really hard on myself a lot. Really hard on myself. Instead of looking at mistakes as wrong actions, I tend to look at myself and consider myself wrong overall. I also thinks this stems a lot from childhood, where I frantically tried to keep up a picture-perfect smile while hiding my true feelings very deep inside of me.



In my family, alcoholism is somewhat common, and the more I go on this journey to understand my own "addiction" or "disease" or whatever (we can discuss terminology later), I see lots of similarities between my journey and the journey for an alcoholic to become sober.

My question for you all is - if you are far along in your journey, what was one of the biggest life lessons you learned as you adapted to a healthier lifestyle? If you are closer to the beginning of your journey, what's one lesson you hope to learn? TGIF Everyone!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder...

and my heart lately is growing fonder and fonder of living a healthy lifestyle (that I have, unfortunately, been absent from the last couple of weeks). I have put my determination to get healthy on a shelf somewhere and promptly forgot about it (or was in denial of seeing it stare me in the face?). I shake my fist at myself and say, "WHY did you let such great habits once again slip through your fingers?" I sulk and scold myself all at the same time.

Things outside of my blogging/healthy living researching/Sparkpeople participating life has been going by at a very high speed, and it's only now I am catching my breath and realizing that I am WAY off course. I haven't gained any weight back (not one pound - as odd as that is) but I am also not exercising or putting much effort into what I'm eating. These aren't excuses - I chose to make really bad choices about how to handle these situations, and that's WHY I am not in the shape I was a couple of weeks ago.

And you know what? I miss it.

Lately I've noticed a familiar feeling of being enslaved to food again - like I have to constantly satisfy my cravings or go crazy. I think it's the carbs talking, I really do. I was easily passing up many tempting choices, but now I can't seem to let them go by - telling myself all sorts of lies to make each step off the plan "not a big deal"

I also miss my daily strolls to clear my head, and yet I am looking for excuses not to exercise. I had been pushing myself and building my confidence. I came home sore almost every night, and woke up most mornings feeling well rested and ready to take on another day. Where has that enthusiasm gone? C'mon brain! Get it together!

Tomorrow I pick up the pieces. Not as in tomorrow-so-I-can-stuff-my-face-tonight kind of tomorrows, but really there's not much left of the evening, and I don't have any dangerous food around, so I guess I'm starting tonight. Tomorrow, however, is when I make my routine a priority once again. I just have to keep going.

The Secret Wogging Escapade

Tonight after working at school for awhile, I came home and was completely inspired by the weather to go wogging (walking + jogging). I haven't wogged in my adult life, and now that I am feeling a little stronger, I've been wanting to try, but too afraid to do it in front of ANYONE. Tonight, however, after the sun went down, it was still beautiful outside (60 degrees!) and the air was completely saturated from it raining all day. Everything smelt like spring, and I just couldn't help myself. I had to spend some time outside, and since it was dark and no one would be seeing me, I thought I'd try wogging!

Being the weight I am, I know that wogging for any long distance is not going to be good for my joints, nor have I built up the stamina to sustain it for long periods of time, so I just challenged myself to wog in between streetlamps on my outdoor loop, and it worked nicely! My heart rate was definitely elevated, but I didn't feel like I was pushing myself too far, and nothing was hurting, so I think I was careful enough- we'll see if there is any pain tomorrow. I'm not sure if I will begin wogging on a regular basis yet. I'd like to keep working on increasing my speed and distance in walking along with some strength training, but I'll definitely keep trying it from time to time.

I hope that in a few months I can look back fondly on this moment with a sense of "look how far I've come!", but for now I will go to bed satisfied that I tried something new today, and had some fun in the process!

For those of you who are runners/joggers/wogger - what was your first running event like? I love to be inspired by your stories!