Positively Weightless

 I cannot believe another Sunday is here, these weeks are just flying by at this point! Then again once the "ber" months hit, the rest of the year just seems to completely fly by in my opinion. So what is on the agenda to talk about today? I will admit that I have been a little uninspired a but lately as far as writing goes. Since life is so different than normal right now even still, I have just been lacking in new ideas a bit, but that's okay! Writer's block hits all of us at some point or another and I am of course no exception to that. Sometimes when that happens I like to take something small and grow my idea from that. I figured why not talk about that today!

Life is all about the small things we come across. If you think about it, pretty much everything in life starts out as a small thing and then grows and expands into something different. We all started off as tiny microscopic organisms that eventually grew into a baby to child to the adult we are today. Even all the big companies we know and likely purchase from today started off as an idea and grew from there. If you plant a garden you either start from a seed or a seedling and they grow and produce new life from there. If you really sit down and think about it, life is all about small things that grow into bigger things... and making changes in our life is really no different than that!

Let's talk about the obvious example here, and one I have talked about before. If you are aiming for a healthier lifestyle, it is all about making small changes! If you never exercise, aim to just do something active once or twice a week at first and grow from there! Just as I talked about in a post a few weeks ago about making adjustments, all of these big life changes have to start somewhere. If you want to clean up your diet start by adding more vegetables to your meals, cut the amount of sugar in your coffee, and substitute that soda you drink with lunch with a flavored sparkling water or even just plain water. My main problem in the past was that I went way too hard with weight loss way too fast and that only set me up for failure. There is nothing wrong with baby steps as they lead us to make life long changes rather than just looking for a quick fix.

The same can be said about really anything in life. Take my writing for example. As I mentioned, if I am having some writer's block I usually take a small idea a build from there. This morning I contemplating just skipping an entry this week but instead I chose a small idea and built off of it, and look at where I am, more than halfway through a blog post right now as I type these very words. I think a lot of the time we are our own worst enemy in these cases. Sure it would have been easy to just skip writing and moved on with my day, but instead I pushed myself to keep going and the results were great! That can be said really with most aspects in life. Push yourself to make these small changes! Push yourself to keep going on them and they will snowball into bigger results! 

Get some work done on that big intimidating work project you have. Have an apple after lunch instead of a cookie. Go for a walk instead of lounging around after work and you just may be running a 5k in a few years! You truly never know what you are capable of until you get up and try. Stop trying to take the easy way out and push yourself a bit more each and every day and before you know it you just may have the results you are looking for. Trust me, I know it is hard. I myself need to remember this advice on some days, as it is so much easier to just go home and put your pajamas on after a long day rather than go to the gym and go a full body workout. No one is perfect, and we will all still have those days, but it is all about those little pushes in between to get us where we want to go!

 Happy Sunday! Fall officially starts this week and if you live somewhere like I do, it may already feel a lot like Fall already. There is a nice chill to the air, the leaves are changing color, and of course all the pumpkin spiced and apple cider treats are appearing on store shelves and menus. Fall is all about change and preparation for the Winter, and I have done my fair share of talking about why change is important, but what about the things that do not change in our lives? What about all of the constants in our lives that are always there for us? The bring us a sense of security and stability. So let's talk about that today.

I think the best example to use that I am sure just about everyone can relate to, and that is a person or people in our lives that are always there with us, through all the good and all the bad. Think about all the people in your life and what they mean to you. I am betting there is at least one person in your life that you always turn to when you are feeling down. It could be a parent, a sibling, a lover, a mentor, a friend, etc. but I am betting you have someone that is always there for you no matter what. That person could also being doing more for you than you ever expected. Think of the person in your life that is a constant source of stability. You have probably been together through a lot and yet they are still there by your side. It is incredibly important not to take them for granted, or else they may no longer be a constant in your life at some point, but we will get more into that later.

Now that we have talked about the people in our lives, what about other positive constants? Well, this other example should be an obvious to most people, but I am betting it isn't. That constant is yourself. I have said it many times before but no one will cheer you on better than you can yourself. You will always be there to pick yourself up when you are down and keep going. You are a constant that you will absolutely never lose. No matter how badly you treat yourself at times, you will still always be there waiting for the love you deserve to give yourself. You will always be a constant source of love and support in your life, the first step is to allow yourself to give it.

Now what happens when these constants in our life disappear? Well chances are we pushed them away, we took them for granted and depended on them being there all the time. Even someone who has stood by us through thick and thin can disappear at times. If you have a pretty plant in a flower pot in your kitchen window it can throve and bloom for years, but as soon as you stop giving it water, love, and take it out of the window away from the sunlight it will start to wither and die. Truly nothing in our lives is constant without love and attention. If you have someone in your life that you can always go to with your problems, make sure you are checking in on them at times too. All relationships are two sided and cannot flourish unless both sides are putting in the work. If you are lucky enough to have a constant person in your life then make sure you are letting them bloom as well.

Overall I wanted to make sure you all realize how lucky you are to have some of these constants in your life. I think this year has also shown us just how easy some of these constants have disappeared. We are used to having big summer parties for the 4th of July or Easter dinner with our families every year, but all of those had to be put on hold this year. My family does so many things in the Fall like apple picking and visiting the farm to pick out or pumpkins together. As of right now those things can still happen this year, but there is a strong possibility they could be shut down if things get bad again. Always remember that any constant in our life, big or small, can go away so easily, so don't rely on them always being there. Never take them for granted. 

Here we are on yet another Sunday evening! I am not sure about all of you but I am definitely excited that Fall is almost here. It is one of the most relaxing and busy (at the same time) months of the year, at least in my family. From apple picking, to Halloween, to carving pumpkins, and everything in between we have a lot of plans and traditions for this time of year. Even with an ongoing pandemic, all of those things can still be done safely. But I did not bring you here to talk about Fall and all that comes with it. What I did want to talk today was about fear, but not in the way you probably think. I talked about fear a few months ago in response to the way people were dealing with this global pandemic, but today I wanted to put a more positive and light-hearted spin on fear.

So how can I possibly talk about something so deep on a lighter level? Well fear can hold us back from so many things in our life that we truly want to do and/or experience. For the longest time I have a huge fear of flying and never wanted to ever step foot on a airplane. In college I took a trip to Florida to go to the Harry Potter section of Universal Studios Islands of Adventure and yes, I actually took a plane there. Had I let my fear of flying fully get in the way I would have never been able to experience that trip! That is just one example of course, but I am sure you can think of plenty of things you are scared to do that just may be holding you back from something big in your life.

One of the biggest examples in my life specifically would be the gym. My fear of the gym is a pretty long story. Back when I was at my heaviest and just started out on my fitness journey I had no intention of ever going to a gym for fear of being judged for being an obese person at the gym. Eventually I overcame that, especially when the at-home workouts were no longer challenging me, and I got my butt to the gym with a buddy (shoutout to Stephanie for finally getting me to take that step) on her guest pass. I eventually ended up with a membership of my own so I could go by myself too. Fast-forward a few years and although I was at the gym, I still had a fear of it in a sense. I would only stick to the cardio machines and never ventured into the other areas. If you have been following this page over the last few years you'll remember that I was then randomly approached by a personal trainer at the gym who then showed me exercises with the sections of the gym I had been too scared to use for all these years. Now I am stronger than ever (my trainer was pretty impressed at how much strength I kept even with the gyms closed for 4 months) and I actually prefer weight training over cardio now. Think of what I would be missing out on if I had let fear completely deter me away from all of this!

Another great example, and one I would almost guarantee everyone has dealt with in some way, would be the fear that comes along with opening up to new people. For many reasons a lot of us have a fear when letting new people into our lives. If I had to guess, I would say this stems from people that have hurt us in our past. Maybe someone you were dating completely broke your heart, blindsided you, or anything that broke your trust with new people just a bit. After going through a breakup it is hard to put yourself out there again and I think sometimes that leads us to push people away that would have loved us unconditionally. Sometimes we are lucky enough to have someone that is patient and kind enough to wait for you to get past all that. But regardless isn't life about taking risks and living life to the fullest? If we constantly push people away because of our own fears where does that leave us in the end? Do not let the fear that someone else instilled into you push someone that will love you away.

Overall I think fear can have a lot of factors in our life that causes us to not be living the life we want. Now I am not saying to go out and do something reckless like bungee jumping or sky diving or anything like that, but what I am saying it to not let fear hold you back from the beautiful things in life. We do not find love without a little heartache. We cannot truly reach our fitness goals if we don't push ourselves a little harder than we normally would. I wouldn't have poetry published in multiple places now if I had let my fear of rejection held me back. It is so easy to live life in the easy, non-problematic way, but are you truly getting what you want out of life that way? Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy! (10 points to anyone who gets that reference!) As long as you are not hurting anyone or yourself, there is no need to let fear hold you back!

 Happy Sunday all! I hope you are all having a great weekend and for those of us who have Labor Day off it is even a long weekend! I had a fairly busy workweek last week so this Monday off is very welcomed for me. This week's topic is pretty present in every person's life I would assume. When we truly want something in life, whether it is a physical item, an event that is coming up, or something we need to work for, it is always hard to keep our patience. I learned a little lesson in that this week and figured what a better way to get that frustration out than to write about it for this week's post?

I think a lot of people (if not most of us) used quarantine as an excuse to slack on our exercise routines and eating habits. I myself tried my best to keep up with workouts but motivation lacked sometimes during that journey. I have mentioned in the past that I am very much an emotional and bored snacker so social distancing was no exception to that. I will say though that my weight really did not change that much in the process. I decided this week, however, that I wanted to get serious about really focusing on my health and cleaning up my diet and exercise habits so I am healthy in my future for all the things I want to do. I jumped right back into this this week and tracked all my calories and went right back to my 5 days a week workout schedule. You can probably guess my frustrations though when I weighed myself at the end of the week and was down less than half of a pound only.

So why is this story relevant to my topic here? Well once I got over the frustration and disappointment of my weight in I gave myself a little pep talk. All good things take work and most importantly they take time. The first time around when I lost a lot of weight I lost it too fast. This only lead me to go a little crazy as soon as I stopped restricting so much. This time around I am aiming for long term, forever results so I realize it is going to take time and a lot of effort. Whenever we do things for long term results like this it most certainly requires a lot of patience. The best things in life take time and take hard work to acquire. I will not let the frustration with the scale on my first week set me off track, if anything it is just a sign to keep going and working hard!

Patience has been incredibly important this year for all of us in some way, shape, or form I would say too. I would be willing to guess that the majority of people had to put off something because of the pandemic over the past few years. In my case it was a trip, in others I know they had to postpone weddings or other big events they had planned. Of course that is awful for all of us, but it only means we have something to look forward to in the future. Patience is the key to get us through this. Instead of dwelling on the loss think about what you gained from needing to change your plans. In my case it give us time to save money and research more places we may want to go on our trip. If you had to postpone a wedding of something along those lines maybe you can find a new way to make your big day even more special when it comes along. Your patience will reward you in the end if you let it.

When you truly want something it genuinely is hard to wait for it right? We live in a world where we get things almost instantly now. If our internet takes more than 15 seconds to load something we get impatient, if we do not get our coffee order at Starbucks within 3 minutes we usually get a little annoyed. I am guilty of this myself sometimes I will fully admit. Life is not meant to be lived instantly though and I think it is important to remind ourselves of that from time to time. Life is short enough as it is so is it now important that we take some time to truly absorb what is going on around us. I know we all want things instantly, but let's take some time to be more patient with each other, ourselves, and for the world around us. The results will be all the more sweeter in the end if we do!