With three new grandbabies (bringing us to eight grandchildren), plus being self-employed, the past couple of months have been beyond busy for me. All three of our adult children and their families live close by, which is a huge blessing for both myself and them, allowing me to be available to help. At times, the juggling needed to make sure that everything that needs to be done is taken care of has left me a bit stressed and more than a little tired. I'm so thankful that healthy habits have become part of my lifestyle, because in my obese past, a busy schedule would be a lost day/week/month for me in terms of doing anything healthy. In my obese past, a busy week (or even a busy day!) would be one where I went into what I called my "survival mode," which meant "don't even think about trying to make any changes, just get through it" mindset. "Survival mode" for me meant eating whatever I wanted, because so-called comfort food was an integral part of my survival. Any week that included a lot of extra activity automatically triggered my "survival mode" mentality.
The funny thing is that I spent an awful lot of my time in a "survival mode", but I was barely surviving - and actually THRIVING was not even on my radar. What was happening was that I kept gaining weight and getting into a less and less healthy state, ending up diabetic and on medication for several different things. I kept thinking that when things slowed down, I'd try to make some lifestyle changes. When things weren't so busy, I just knew that I'd finally have time to focus on losing weight and getting healthy. The problem was, of course, that things never really slowed down and every week was filled with things that, in my thinking, mandated yet another "survival mode" week.
What a difference Take Shape for Life has made in my life! I have not only gone from surviving to really, truly thriving, but this healthy lifestyle now fits perfectly into even the busiest of days or weeks. In fact, when I'm really busy I tend to eat more Medifast meals just because they are SO convenient and inexpensive. I just grab and go and don't have to worry about what I'm going to eat or when - I don't even think about it. Instead of going into a "survival mode" and eating a lot of high-sugar, high-fat empty carbs that used to drain me of all energy, I now have high-nutrition mini-meals that provide the energy I need to keep going.
One of the things I've learned is that there will always be 101 excuses to not make healthy choices. Life is busy and life has a lot of built-in stresses, so if we are looking for excuses, we don't have to look far. However, if we really WANT to get healthy, if our eyes are fixed on what we really want, it's amazing how quickly those excuses evaporate.
Once we're focused on what we really want, we figure out how to make it happen. I heard someone recently say that if your dream is big enough, the facts don't matter. If your dream is to get to a healthy weight and live a life that truly exemplifies optimal health, then the "facts" don't matter: the fact that things are stressful, the fact that life is incredibly busy, the fact that you have twenty social events this month and all of them will involve food, the fact that your kids are making you crazy and your dog threw up and your boss makes Mr. Scrooge look like boss of the year, etc. etc.
I'm really not trying to sound insensitive to all of the issues that many of you are facing, and I really do understand that life can be incredibly difficult. What I have come to understand is that NOT taking care of ourselves won't make any of those things better or easier, and eating the wrong kind of food won't help, either. There may be a lot of things in your life that you can't control right now- but whether or not you stay on plan is something that you CAN control.
I hope that today is a wonderful, stress-free day and that you are having a wonderful, stress-free week, but even if it's going to be a crazy day and it's been a crazy week, the choice is yours as to how you will respond. Choose wisely :-)
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