Over the past years, I have gained some weight. 8 kilos to be precise. And that’s okay. I don’t mind having gained it; it served a purpose, and now it is time to let it go. I don’t need the extra weight to protect myself anymore, or the food to sooth me. I am ready to let it go physically and emotionally. Before I got pregnant, I was physically extremely fit. I had a really healthy diet and worked out and ran every day. Lean and mean was my motto. Then I got my daughter and getting back in the game proved to be not as easy as it had seemed beforehand. As much as I wanted to be fit again, it seemed I had lost the high level of discipline I used to have. I just seemed unable to motivate myself to diet or exercise. I knew I was healthy and I was unwilling to force myself to do anything I didn’t want to do. I didn’t fight it, and on a certain level knew it was a phase in my becoming.
When you keep a pendulum in a horizontal position and then let it go, it swings all the way to the other side, and it takes a while for the pendulum to hang motionless in the middle. Today, I see balance as a natural state, all we have to do is allow ourselves to let go of our need to control the outcome by controlling the how, allow ourselves to let go of the pendulum we are keeping in a certain position with all our might. When we let it go, it will sway all the way to the other side and then back, again and again and again until it has lost all the built up energy. This takes time. This is true for any area where we have forced ourselves to be a certain way. I had always reached my goals through sheer force. I was fit out of fear to get sick, I was lean out of fear to be fat. Today, I cannot motivate myself to things the old way anymore. And that is a good thing. In this day and age that is a really weird thing to say, because society seems to thrive on it. I don’t think that is true. I think it creates burn-out and depression and addiction and a whole host of other dis-eases. I think it is rather healthy on my part to not be able anymore to motivate myself to be someone I am not. I’d rather be aligned, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I’d rather feel whole, perfect as I am, enough, than fit a certain picture anyone may have of me.
I want to lose weight, not to be picture perfect, but to feel lean and mean again. I love being a physical powerhouse. I love having an incredibly strong body, I love feeling healthy and ageless. I love nourishing my body with the foods it loves. I love hearing my cells sing hallelujah. I love feeling green on the inside. I love my skin being firm and healthy. I love feeling and seeing muscle definition. I love how my hair shines, my skin glows and my eyes sparkle when I am physically up to speed with all that I am. Having lived it makes it easier to manifest, because I know what feeling I am looking for, I only have to remember it to tap into it, to access it and feel it. Being able see it with my mind’s eye and feel it helps manifest it more easily than anything else I could do. Our body does not distinguish reality from imagination or memory, it doesn’t know if it is real, if we are regurgitating or envisioning something new. And it doesn’t care either. Our bodies will do anything to comply. Basically, what we believe to be true our bodies will do their utmost best to manifest. When what we ponder most of the time is negatively charged, our bodies will be flooded by stress hormones, which will keep us narrowly focused on the thing we fear, constantly triggering our body to release more stress hormones, a downward spiral. When on the other hand what be think about and believe to be true is uplifting and empowering, our body releases feel good hormones and not only do we see and feel the same world differently, we absorb different nutrients, our metabolic rate is higher, we are more likely to make better choices and are open to possibilities. In these past years, I have learned that, beyond a certain point, old school motivation doesn’t work anymore, because it is external and fear-based. If it works for you and you feel good about it, just keep going. As for me, I chose inspiration over motivation. To manifest a body that feels as powerful as I feel mentally, emotionally and spiritually, I will inspire myself on a daily basis by keeping in the forefront of my brain my vision and even more importantly how it makes me feel. I will focus my energy not on a certain diet or on the scale, but on how I want to feel by feeling it already. I will allow myself to be inspired to eat certain foods and let go of others, to feel when I need to eat and when I need to stop, to do certain exercises and not be bothered by others. I will not push no force myself. I will trust my body to follow my vision.
Picture by John Nyberg