Strengthening a New Muscle

Welcome to June!  It's hard to believe that this is the sixth month of the year already!  For those of you who've been on the program for a while, I hope that the new, healthier habits you've been developing are becoming more and more established in your life. 

When I was on the 5&1 weight loss phase of Take Shape for Life's optimal health program, I often said that I was getting a lot of practice exercising my "no thank you muscle."  I reasoned that learning to say "no thank you" to things while I was losing weight would strengthen my ability to say "no thank you" once I was in Maintenance.  I understood that some of my old favorites would not, could not, be an ongoing part of a thin and healthy life, so it was important to have a strong "no thank you muscle."

The funny thing about muscles is that they have a tendency to either grow stronger or atrophy, depending on whether or not we use them.  One definition for atrophy is " A wasting or decrease in size of a body organ, tissue, or part owing to disease, injury, or lack of use."  Anyone who has ever broken a bone and worn a cast has seen the effect of immobilizing an extremity for a few weeks.  It's truly a "use it or lose it" scenario when it comes to our muscles.

The same is true for our "no thank you muscle" :-).  The more we practice it now, the stronger it will be and the better it will serve us on the other side of 5&1, which is the rest of our lives.  There are so many reasons why it makes sense to stay on plan, and this is just one of them.  Every time we choose to stay on plan, every time we turn down something that we'd really like to eat, choosing to stay focused on what we REALLY want, we grow a bit stronger.  We learn that we CAN say no (that's something that came as a bit of a surprise to me!), we learn that we really CAN have a good time even though we aren't eating what everyone else is eating.  And as we learn that, we grow stronger.

Are you ready to do a little muscle building today?  The choice is yours . . . choose wisely :-)