Five Things

From the WW website: "List five things you’re doing now that you weren’t doing a month ago. Perhaps you’re walking 15 minutes longer, taking the stairs or drinking water. It’s all good. Recognize the positive things you’re doing instead of focusing on what you don’t feel are going so well."

Things happen to be going great. But it is wonderful to remind oneself of everything that is already changing along the way.

1) I ate very well before I joined WW. But now I am eating WONDERFULLY. I can't believe how radiant and alive I am feeling on a whole foods diet (not quite 100%, but very, very close: increasingly infrequent protein powder and increasingly infrequent vegan meat products are almost the only exception). Really and truly, I feel newly focused on all the incredible food I am putting *in* my body, not the food I am "denying" my body. What an epiphany.

2) I am exercising 5-6 days a week, and generally walking more and being more active even on my "rest" days. It is joyful to feel so alive in my body again! I can run for a half-hour nonstop now! (That may not sound like much to you, but to me, it is huge). I rode my bike for 20 miles! I am very excited to think about all my body is doing and will be able to do as I continue down this path. I'm starting to think big thoughts.

3) I am fitting into some of my size 6 clothes again! Just a few more pounds and I will fit into most of them.

4) I have cut way, way back on caffeine. I had been drinking 3 cups a day. I'm now down to 3/4 cup. This is perhaps the single best thing I can do to stop overstimulating my adrenal glands, and ceasing to overstimulate my adrenal glands means less stress/anxiety and better blood sugar management, which also means less overeating to compensate for blood sugar crashes. Hooray!

5) I'm taking my vitamins. I still don't take them every day. There are so many of them I feel like I *should* take for general health and for blood sugar management that sometimes I get overwhelmed by it. But I am taking them pretty consistently 4 or 5 days a week, and it is much more on my radar as a thing I really need to do. And guess how often I took them before WW? Zero times a week!

6) I need to add this. It's not a separate thing I'm doing, but it is a result of 1-5: I am getting close to being in my healthy weight range, and I have made myself less likely, maybe even much less likely, to get diabetes and a whole panoply of other diseases. This one is HUGELY motivating for me!

This was a helpful exercise. I'm not at goal (yet), I'm not a size 4 (yet), I have more positive changes to make. But I truly have transformed my life in only two months. And I am never going back.