Excuses. They get the best of us every time!
I was full of excuses as to why I was not making the changes I needed to make.
- I have no time to exercise (I didn't want to)
- We couldn't afford to buy real food. (processed food is always more expensive)
- My juicer is in storage (yes it was until recently, but that still was no excuse)
- I can't read my Bible or pray while Charlie is awake.
There were many more, but those were the biggest ones.
I wanted all of my ducks to be in a row before I did anything.
I had to get over that because if I didn't I would just continue to gain weight and be depressed. My ducks would never be in a row all at the same time and if they were they wouldn't stay that like that very long.
We started making changes slowly. The first thing we had to do was throw out all the excuses.
We looked at our diet first. What were we eating that we could replace with something better?
That is the key! If you are removing things from your diet, make sure you replace them with something else. I'm really good at removing things, but not replacing them. So after time, I'm craving the bad stuff.
Snacks for example. At one time, we kept a lot of chips, microwave popcorn and crackers as snacks. It was easy to pull out a bag of chips to snack on or throw a bag of popcorn in the microwave. Now, our snacks are raw fruits of veggies, nuts, popcorn popped on the stove and healthy granola & nut bars. If I can't fit the already made healthy snacks into the budget then I find something I can make.
Exercise was a no brainer. I just needed to dust off my tennis shoes and walk. No gym memberships. No trainer hired to kick my butt everyday. Just get out of the house & put my shoes to the pavement. 30 minutes a day was our goal. Surely I could walk for 30 minutes.
My point of all this is just to say that we had to get rid of our excuses and just do what we could with what we had. We didn't have the money to shop at the farmers market. But we could begin buying healthier food that our body actually recognized as food at our neighborhood stores.
We didn't have to go to the gym to exercise, we could do it at our house..for FREE!
It really all boiled down to what we decided was important. Until we understood the importance of taking better care of ourselves we would not do anything. It is a process. It takes time. The benefits far out weigh any excuse we ever had.
You know where I learned this from? Jesus. He takes us the way we are and helps us grow and become more like him. He doesn't have a list of what we need to do before we can become his. We don't have to have our ducks in a row. We believe. I love that!!
Just do it!
