I don’t want to sound paranoid but think in general we have been misguided about most things. From telling us what we need, want and should have in our life to things that have very little to do with how they help us live better, it is all for sale to us. Oh it is all packaged in a way that shows how easy and fun life will be but often the actual results well, they are tell a different story. Nowhere is this more true than where we are sold goods intended to help us be more healthy or lose weight.
In my own experience I have found most diets don’t work for me at least. There are many to choose from and I’ve tried a lot of them over the years. From feeling hungry all the time to needing a restroom constantly it never made sense to me how I was going to maintain this type of living the rest of my life. I mean seriously who wants to do all that work and sacrifice to lose weight just to put it back on again. Yet that is what happens to most of us who do the diet thing, regardless of type used. It is simply not sustainable if we’re even able to stick with it.
Then adding in exercise most of us fail pretty quickly at this one. From feeling awkward at how hard it is to being frustrated at a lack of results, not many of us stick with a regular routine of working out either. It too seems challenging to maintain any regularity to get to the point it is a routine too. I admire people who can spend 2 hours a day in a gym; truly their dedication is honorable. I barely feel I have 20 minutes to myself a day much less 2 hours to punish my body with intense working out – and liking it
In general I’m not against either but I think this is where the misguidance has occurred and resulted in so many of us failing at improving health or losing weight. What hasn’t been considered in this otherwise sound advice is what that means when done while living naturally. You know like every day people who have children, jobs, errands, and life. Yes, there is always change required to meet goals like being more healthy but I’m talking sustainability and enjoying the process. To me those are just as important as achieving the single minded goal of losing weight and being healthy.
The other part that often is not part of this discussion is how we are feeling emotionally though it all. If all we’re focusing on is our body then we’re leaving out the bigger part of our self who probably needs some help too. We can achieve a physical goal but what good is that if we’re beating ourselves up over not being perfect in another way? What if we don’t feel like we’re enough even after we lose the weight? In my opinion and experience being healthy is as much physical as it is emotional for best results.
So is it all a lost cause of impossibility and we should console ourselves with chips?
I think it is entirely possible when we approach it with living naturally.
When I think about healthy and living naturally it is a transformation that allows our best self to emerge. It is our happiest self who feels the best we’ve ever felt living our regular life and loving it. It is every day, the small things we create in our life that support where we are and where we want to be. It is also a lot about forgiveness to ourselves and loving the person we are today as much as we love the smaller sized of ourselves we want to see in the tomorrow. It is life journey that honors our needs and gives us that gentle help along the way.
All this month I am exploring a different approach to this entire diet and exercising thing as a path to improving health and losing weight. I am looking at it from the lens of living more naturally that honors what we are feeling and what we need. Sometimes that is a gentleness and sometimes it is a nudge but it is always about us, individually and custom in who we are. This is a very personal journey but there are guides we can use to find our way.
As I wrote the posts for this month I found myself focusing on what it means to live naturally when it comes to food, fitness and emotional well-being. This is deeply personal for most of us because there’s a lot of embarrassment when it comes to our weight. We feel shame and even depression over it too. Between not feeling like we fit in because of it, to our own mind beating ourselves up over it there is little wonder why we can’t find something that works. We want to feel better, have more energy, fit in cute clothes but we just can’t seem to find the things that work for us. So we hide in black stretchy clothes and try not to think about it. I say enough holding ourselves back!
To live naturally is to feel comfortable with who we are and what we need. It is about enjoying our journey and living our best life. That my friend is possible regardless of the tag size in our pants. This is about feeling our best inside and out and that is always possible when we feel good about ourselves. When we feel good there is no stopping what goals we want to achieve including getting healthy and losing weight.
So join me on this month’s journey of what it means to have health and living naturally well. Be sure to subscribe to the blog to not miss any post this month.
For more information on Dragonspit Apothecary, including natural products I recommend visit dragonspitapothecary.com