They just do.
They’re built that way.
Temples.
To be healthier – it comes down to mind over matter.
I really don’t like that phrase.
But it does!
It amazes me to look back on the days when I was sure I was “so in control”.
I was so not in control.
One of the first freedoms I remember experiencing was food.
It was in college.
I had a part time job.
And I had freedom, baby. Yeah!
A good day’s lunch usually consisted of a 6oz bag of Salt and Vinegar Lay’s Potato Chips, purchased from the Food Chief across the highway from campus.
For just $0.99, I could enjoy every last crumb all by myself, and I could do so daily. Not bad for a college student’s budget. Usually I could finish the whole 6 ounces in a sitting. Cramming the empty bag of evidence under the driver’s seat of my Honda.
Freedom!
Whose mother ever offered that for lunch?
I can even remember thinking to myself that I hoped I was never in a car wreck, where the remains of my chip runs and snack food fetish would be discovered beneath me.
It was freedom in the sense that I didn’t have anyone telling me what I could and could not eat.
Freedom in that I was paying for my food choice with my own money. Money I earned working as a pharmacy technician. How funny is that? I even catered to my chip craving at work. Loved me some Chipotle BBQ Ruffles Potato Chips, dipped in Chesapeake Bay Clam dip. It was fortunate the pharmacy I worked at was located inside of a grocery store.
I thought I was in control. In the driver’s seat. “I will feed my body what I want to feed my body, when I want to feed my body.”
Here’s what I know now, and it’s taken me 30+ years to come to this conclusion –
Being in control means that the mind takes a back seat to the matter, in the whole mind over matter thing.
The matter is our bodies are designed to need nutrition. We were fearfully and wonderfully made that way.
The mind is our free will to do what we want to do.
So what is actually in control when I choose to eat a 6 oz bag of Lay’s Potato Chips?
The mind, or the matter?
When I choose to tend to the matter, instead, I’m choosing to feed my body what it needs.
Today marks 64 days of my trying to feed my body what it needs.
Eating cleaner.
Eating responsibly.
Eating purposefully.
A trip to the doctor’s office today revealed
weight loss
the lowest blood pressure reading in years
and
a better overall healthy appearance.
It was with giddy excitement that I propped up in the adult-sized highchair in the laboratory and awaited the technician who would harvest a sample of my blood. Giddy! Yeah, I’m not right that way. But what a different visit this was to the doctor for me. I’ve never before been excited to see “where I am” on the richter scale of healthiness. And I anxiously await the lab results in a few days, in anticipation of celebrating lower cholesterol levels than were reported a year ago.
Control.
That’s what I am experiencing these days, as I trek forward in this previously (to me) unchartered territory called Positive Lifestyle Change.
And know what’s really cool? It doesn’t take long at all to start seeing improvements in your body once you begin making changes. Within ten days of eating cleaner, I had more energy and was sleeping better. Within one month of adding exercise to the healthier eating, I noticed improved stamina and strength. Our bodies WANT to be healthy. They do! All you have to do is decide that you’re taking control – real control – and treating your body to the good things it deserves.
Bye-bye, Lay’s Potato Chips. It’s been fun, but I’m moving on…
the toenail 