Sharpening Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
For eight weeks I have taken part in Salon Dae’s Transformation Challenge. The challenge began on October 1. The purpose was to share and encourage others on the journey to a healthier lifestyle that includes not merely losing weight but physical exercise and nutrition. I hesitated about taking the challenge for a few reasons.
- Exercise challenges make me competitive, crazy, and obsessive.
- I am not at my healthiest in a competitive state; I’m competing against myself which makes me crazy and obsessive pushing myself to be better. I am my worst enemy. I stress myself out. Not a right attitude for sharpening the self.
- The weight I lose in competition comes back and my crazy returns pushing me to cut more food from my diet or binge on the food I’ve cut from my diet.
- I hate diets; I enjoy workouts: walking on the treadmill with a good book or outside listening to nature, Zumba classes, yoga at home, free weights, HITT classes and a hike up the mountain.
Danielle Pitts, the owner and master stylist at Salon Dae, wanted to inspire women who are working on their physique as well as healthy lifestyles. I joined the contest to support her goal. I believe in supporting women, especially black women entrepreneurs.
Exercise and nutrition challenges are not new to me. In 1992, I entered my first challenge called Spare Tire. I learned how to walk on the treadmill and lift dumbbells to firm my triceps and biceps. I learned that losing inches was far better than losing weight. I learned how to incorporate exercise into my lifestyle. Since the fitness room was in the building where I worked, I exercised during my 30-minute lunch break and 30-minutes after work. Endorphins became my friend. According to WebMD, when you exercise, your body releases endorphins. “Endorphins interact with the receptors in the brain that reduce your perception to pain and trigger a positive feeling in your body.” This euphoric feeling can cause a positive and energetic outlook on life. I was fit. I was fast. I was strong. I got pregnant.
After having my first baby, my exercise fell to the bottom of my to-do list. I had gained a tremendous amount of weight and taking it off was a challenge. I was silently depressed. I didn’t have such an enthusiastic outlook on life. Additionally, my days were filled with building a freelance writing career, taking care of a baby managing a new house. I couldn’t fit exercise into my day or my week.
One day, three years later, I read 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27. Here, Apostle Paul, the writer of this epistle, teaches about self-discipline. He compares his life in Christ to that of an athlete in the Isthmian games. Athletes are fit, and they practice the exercise. They discipline their mind and body. They think about what goes in the body and the results of the body. I too began to think about training my physical body just as I had been exercising my spiritual mind. I joined the local fitness club that had babysitting and off I went to the gym: aerobic classes and walks on the treadmill.
However, I became obsessed with ridding the extra pounds. I walked in the morning before breakfast. I walked in the evenings after dinner. I ate high protein meals and drank 64 ounces of water a day. To my detriment, I also followed a super diet regimen that required ingesting weight loss pills before each meal. I lost the weight. Endorphins became my friend. I got pregnant, again.
Only during this pregnancy, I exercised and ate healthily. I didn’t take heed to the myth that pregnant women could eat anything. One factor that attributed to gaining 70 pounds during my first pregnancy.
Keeping a food journal made me rethink what I was putting in my mouth.
After giving birth, I hired a personal trainer for six weeks. He instructed me to write everything I ate in a journal. Logging what I ate helped me keep track of good and bad fats, and sugar. After six weeks, I could run a mile in ten minutes. I had a regimen working my biceps and back, triceps and chest every other day, and my legs daily. I was not obsessive. I did not make myself crazy. I did not binge.
In September of 2015, I couldn’t fit a denim skirt, or a pair of slacks, or a dress that I had worn years prior. I stepped on the scale. I cried. I screamed. I was angry at myself. I had once again put exercise to the bottom of the list and drank too many skinny vanilla lattes and ate too many sandwiches. I had a four-hour commute twice a week in addition to teaching five classes.
I joined the local gym, participated in Zumba classes, yoga sessions, and free weights four days a week. I participated in a capstone project for healthy living, which required logging my weight weekly. Then there was a fitness challenge at the gym that came along with a prize, small fitness classes led by a personal trainer. Once again, I sharpened my workout regimen with new exercises such as planks, squats, HITT sessions, battle ropes, and the TRX suspension training. My obsession and crazy set in as I logged my good on Fitness Pal, ate less than 1200 calories. I began walking and jogging across the Hudson Walkway on Saturday mornings when I rolled out the bed. Before worship service, on Sunday I was in the gym. One night I looked at my fit bit and had not hit 10,000 steps, so I walked up and down the staircase until I hit 1000 steps. Crazy. Obsessive.
Nope, I didn’t win the fitness challenge, but I lost four inches of body fat and learned new exercise techniques. I lost twenty-four pounds, ten of which have returned because I am eating instead of insensibly drinking my meals and eating fewer calories that my body requires. I need to lose five pounds according to my doctor, but I’m not obsessing about those five pounds.
One of my six posts for the Transformation Journey Challenge.
And joining Salon Dae’s Transformation Challenge helped me to not obsess about losing weight, win a prize, or make myself crazy. In October when I stepped on the scale at Salon Dae, I had already lost one of those five pounds. Eight weeks later, I have not met my weight loss goal, but I am fit. I am healthy. I am strong. Endorphins remain my friend, and the euphoric feeling keeps me positive and gives me an energetic outlook on life.
As of the writing, I am in second place, mainly because I posted my journey which required five posts. Several of the posts can be seen on Instagram
What I’ve learned about exercise challenges: the challenge incorporates my mind, my heart, and my soul.
I pray God’s best life for you,
Until next time!