Sometimes, You Cannot Do It Alone…

 I am excited.  For a gift to me, Ian has hired a trainer to work with me on my daily lifestyle.  I don’t want to say diet, because I don’t want to diet.  I want to be healthy not live according to a diet plan and I want to do this every day for the rest of my life, not just during a season of dieting.

While I want to lose weight, what I really want more is to be lean and healthy in all ways…physically, mentally and spiritually.  I have the “want to”.  I have the growing discipline.  What I don’t have is the full discipline and the full know how.  Thus, the trainer.

In my initial meeting, I told one of the trainers, “I don’t want to become some fitness beast who is so obsessed with their own physical fitness that all else in their live takes a back seat.  What I want is common sense fitness to grow my body into a healthy form so that I am better able to serve others and to be my best self.”

I believe that our bodies are vessels given to us by God and  the better we care for them, the better able we are to do the work we are called to do.  Thus, having a healthy one, is vital to our lives.

There are obstacles I have in my path to fitness.  Some are very clear to me.  Some are just ideals.  Some are not yet known but will become known as I work toward the direction of better  health.  Ultimately, all of it will require work.

And, truth.

To make a change in any facet of our lives, you have to begin with a foundation of truth. 

As I told my trainer….the image I see in my mirror does not match the image in my heart.  How can we reconcile those two?

She laughed….and, then was serious.

“Sometimes, you cannot.”

I cannot??  Then, why am I here??

Very kindly but very definitively, she said, “sometimes…..you have to let go of the old image and paint a new one.”

She explained, “sometimes in life, when you base your future on what you have seen or done in the past, the image is skewed….and, no matter how hard you try to erase or change the old image, you cannot do it.”  “Sometimes, it is better to paint a new one.  Truly laying down past thoughts and ideas about yourself and growing new, different thoughts.”

It’s like being “re-drawn”.

So, I looked hard at my trainer and said, “please explain yourself.”

And, so she did.  And, it made sense.

And, I saw truth in what she said mainly because she said true change begins with truth with yourself.  That is a “truth” on which both she and I can agree.

She said those who do the best on becoming healthy are those who learn to be firmly honest with themselves.  Honest about where they are currently and honest about how hard they are willing to work to get to where they need to be for a healthy body.

She said “all health begins with full truth”.

But, that is the easiest part.  She said most people can admit that they are unhealthy, unfit, undisciplined.  Some, in fact, brag that they know they are this way and that they will just have to live with themselves because there is nothing they can do to change it.  In the name of “self-acceptance”, they will just have to accept their unhealthy bodies and minds and so will others around them.

They would be wrong.

She said a certain few get past their surface truth, and to the core truth in their lives and make changes which forever impact their lives in a healthy and positive way.

They paint a new picture of themselves.

I am a pretty down-to-earth kind of girl, but this makes sense to me. 

So, part of my goal in working with a trainer is having them assist me in painting a new picture.

Of myself.

One which is truthful in where I am, honest in where I want to be and can be and one which is committed…moment by moment…to being the best self I can be.

And, maybe in doing so, I will get more fit….in all ways.

Bring on the “trainer”…..not just with my physical health but in all aspects of my life.

Oh wait....HE's been there all along.....bring on a better "student" in me!

Blessings,

Lesa