Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The Plan

First off I wanted to say thanks to those of you (all 3 of you!) who still read my blog after all this time, it's so nice of you to!

As part of my plan to achieve my goals, and achieve my new mindset, I wrote down my strengths and weaknesses pertaining to food. This is so I know what to look out for, and what tools I have to help me. My weaknesses list is much longer than my strengths list, but I know over time this will become the opposite. A great tool that I have at my disposal is my journal. It's going to act as sort of my own personal therapist :). I think that when I start to have emotion driven cravings and disparaging thoughts that I can work through them by writing them down and analyzing them. As far as my food plan goes, there are a few goals that I want to be able to perfect by the end of this year, or sooner if possible!

1. 50% of calories raw. Since I am shooting for around 1400 cal/day, this means I will try to shoot for no more than 700 calories from cooked food. I know that this is a raw food blog, and I will continue to post raw food recipes, and talk about raw food, but I have also learned that a transition is necessary to attain a raw food lifestyle, and stick with it!

2. No deprivation! I am not going to deprive myself of cravings. I am going to indulge in what I want, but to a degree that allows me to keep loving myself afterwards! There is a difference between treating myself to a cookie, and hurting myself by eating the whole box! I'll also count these indulgences towards my cooked calorie count.

3. No feeling guilty. I won't even indulge the thought. Life is too short!

4. Remove temptations. I'll try to keep destructive foods out of my house, or at least out of reach.

5. Do some sort of exercise every day. No health plan is really complete without exercise! Mostly I do yoga and some aerobics dvds.

I would say I'm on "day 3" of my plan, but that does kinda sound like someday there will be an end to it, if days matter. So, let me just say that I am in the baby stages of my new "lifestyle". That sounds better to me :)

All you need is LOVE!

Although I really do hate the whole New Years Resolution thing, only because it's not taken very seriously. I do think that we should reevaluate ourselves often and try to find things to work on! As for me, I think of the saying: "God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I'm so far behind I'll never die!". This is so true. But, this year I've decided that I'm going to change my mindset. I'm sure I've said this before, and I'll say it again...I HATE DIETS! Self deprivation just doesn't work! I've also realized that motive makes all the difference. Why do I want to be healthy? Better question, why should I be healthy? I truly believe that for myself, the only way that I can answer this is to give myself a sense of accountability. If I truly believe that my body is a gift given to me and that it will transcend death someday, then I need to take that belief seriously. 1 Corinthians 3: 16 says "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" The answer for why should I is quite simply, "because it's one of the greatest gifts I've been given, and it my duty to take care of it".

Another one of my goals in my life, and one I want to focus on this year, is to learn mastery of mind over body. This is why I like yoga so much, because that is what it teaches. It's true that the mind and body are invariably connected in varying degrees, but the more we can separate the two, and learn "mind over matter", the more that we can see our bodies more as vessels, and not our "true selves". Don't I want the vessel that houses my true self to be the best I can make it? Yes! So, it's my mind set that needs to change.

So, after much pondering, I've decided that it all boils down to one word...LOVE! I'm throwing the words deprivation and self denial out the window to go lie in a muddy puddle somewhere, and I'm embracing the word love. It is my motive! I am not ever going to get healthy with a mindset of self deprivation. I am going to get healthy with a mindset where I love my body so much that I'm going to treat it right. Scenario: an apple vs. a donut. Self deprivation says "You totally should not eat that donut, it's so bad for you, force yourself to choose the apple." But self loves says "That apple is going to do so much good for your body, it's just what your body needs to work optimally! Choose that one!" Now, it's going to take years for me to master this mind set, I know it, but it's my ultimate goal!