The Journey Continues - Week 4

This post is the fifth in a series that chronicles my personal journey to better health. You can read the introductory post here.

Here we are, a month into this experiment. I am definitely feeling my strength returning. My balance is SO much better that I can tell my ballet teacher is impressed with my ability to not fall over in the middle of class, even when I don't have the barre right next to me.

I can more easily haul loads (like for instance, my 50-pound daughter when she's having a rough day and just wants to be picked up and held), and I can tell when rehearsing my dance now that I can definitely get some air on those leaps, jumps, and turns. Yay!

So I can confirm, most definitely, that it is the sugar. For me. That's my arch nemesis. And I don't mean candy, by the way. I mean the sneaky stuff. Like the salad dressings and the fruit, for example -- the stuff we don't think of as sugar.

I've been paying attention to lots of factors -- my weight, my inches, how I feel, my gastrointestinal issues (or lack thereof) -- and all of them lead to that one conclusion. I was really sabotaging my efforts to eat cleanly by ingesting too much sugar for me personally. I've cut out most of it and it's amazing the difference I feel.

Is it difficult? Yes, but not as much as it was two or three weeks ago, let me tell you. I can more easily walk away from it now because I know the difference between how I feel without it and how I'll feel after it. It helps. I'm also now more sensitized to sweet tastes, because all of that sugar makes us just want more sugar. Now that I hardly ever have it, a tiny bit is enough. And too much is, well... Too much. So that helps.

Also this week, we moved into our first housesitting gig. It's in a different part of town than the house we lived in this past year. And it's by the water. So I started walking along the trail that's close to the water. Dolphins swim by. Fish flop around out of the water occasionally. It's very cool. I noticed that the trail was more crowded than I would have liked when I first started walking, as I also like to stop and do my morning meditation outside now. Because of that, I started to go to bed earlier so that I could wake up earlier. The earlier I get out on the trail, the less populated it is. That's a shift for me, and one that I like.

With only two weeks of this experiment left, I'm finding myself really enjoying some of the changes I've made. I've had to try things and then see what works best. When something doesn't work, I've adjusted it. I don't have to be rigid, which feels freeing. I don't beat myself up when something does not go as planned. It just means I start again the next day. Hey, this sounds a whole lot like living life in general!I feel myself starting to settle though. I think that I'm heading towards that point of getting some lifestyle changes that are sticking. It's a good feeling.

See you next week.