The best laid plans
Friday night. Do you know, I had to look at the spa schedule of activities to remember what day of the week it was? Heaven...simply perfect!
So, here's what I'd planned to do today:
8-8:50am - 2.5 mile walk
9am - breakfast
10-10:50am - weight circuit
11-11:50am - Stretch or Nia Dance
12-12:25pm - Legs and Glutes workout
1pm - lunch
2-2:45pm WaterWorks (water aerobics)
3-3:50pm Belly Dancing or Stability Ball
4-4:50pm Fun with Crafts: Bead a Bracelet
5-5:50pm Wine Tasting
6-7pm Dinner
8-9pm The Fun Guide to Astrology
Sounds pretty action packed, doesn't it? Here's what I actually did:
8am - woke up (oops)
9am - breakfast
10-11am - rested with my feet up in my room ("you know, I'm too full to workout right now, I'll do the Nia Dance class at 11 instead")
11-11:50am - Boat Cruise up the river/lake ("you know, I just don't feel like dancing and getting sweaty right now, so let's do something relaxing instead!")
12-12:25pm - Legs and Glutes workout ("um, OWWIE, and what's with the little 18 to 19 year olds that were the only others in the class???")
12:30 - lunch ("six hundred calories never tasted so good!")
1:30-4pm - napped, laid around my room contemplating Life, and read the magazine in my room ("oops again - I'd really intended to go to that Belly Dancing class, but I just overslept")
4-4:50pm Fun with Crafts: Bead a Bracelet ("what do you mean, there's no documentation on how to put the bracelet together? I have to be creative? But I don't know HOW!")
5-5:50pm Wine Tasting ("OK, this is more my speed!")
6-8pm Dinner with wine and great conversation (I met three ladies - Kerri, Tara, and Marcia - at the wine tasting and we just moved over to dinner afterwards. Turns out that Kerri and Marcia thought ahead and brought wine to the resort with them, so we all shared in their cleverness and had some great Australian wines with our dinners - yum!)
8pm-present - after sauntering over to my cottage after dinner, I fired up the trusty laptop to write my thoughts while they're fresh and here I've sat ever since.
While I was at dinner, I had the most incredible revelation about why I'm not sticking to my carefully planned out schedule, as I did during my last visit to the spa. Last time, I was down to 213 from 262 and was fanatically devoted to my workout program. Every minute of every day was crammed with physical activity and I even hit the treadmill for an hour each day. Of course, underpinning everything I did was the sense that just being me wasn't good enough unless I was also either thin or working hard to get there. Fitness didn't really enter into my thinking, nor did self love. Self love was something that thin girls had. Certainly there was no way to love yourself if you were fat! (Perish the thought.)
This time, and it didn't hit me until I was lazing around after breakfast, it's different. I came here with the same mentality about needing to work out, needing to do as many classes and physical activities as possible, but that's not what I need or want this time. Right here, right now, I'm already happy with myself and, although I need to lose weight and get stronger for my health, I don't need to kill myself in classes that make me feel uncoordinated or out of shape in order to do that. I can do some treadmilling, take a yoga or stretch class, and do those activities that sound fun to me and make me happy about moving my body rather than things I'm doing out of a sense of obligation.
I cannot express for you in words the way this realization makes me feel. It's as though I've been freed from this huge weight I've been carrying around (no fat jokes, please - LOL) and I can now really, truly relax and enjoy the next 5-1/2 days. I don't think it hurts that I've gotten to a really good place with TCB, either, but that's not the reason for the feeling.
As it turns out, I am the one making myself this happy. I was listening to a great audiobook on my iPod last week and the author talked about how we decide - each and every day - whether we're going to be happy or sad, whether to greet the day with happiness and expectation or dread and fear. I've heard that before but always wrote it off as psychobabble because I just couldn't believe that it was possible that I controlled whether or not I was happy. (That would have meant that, conversely, I was also the one making myself unhappy and how could I be the victim I knew myself to be if it was me that was doing this to myself???)
What I know now is that it's absolutely, 100% true and I've got the proof of it all around me. So, I'm choosing to be happy with myself, my life, and TCB, and the feeling of contentment is worth every mile I've had to walk to get here.
So, here's what I'd planned to do today:
8-8:50am - 2.5 mile walk
9am - breakfast
10-10:50am - weight circuit
11-11:50am - Stretch or Nia Dance
12-12:25pm - Legs and Glutes workout
1pm - lunch
2-2:45pm WaterWorks (water aerobics)
3-3:50pm Belly Dancing or Stability Ball
4-4:50pm Fun with Crafts: Bead a Bracelet
5-5:50pm Wine Tasting
6-7pm Dinner
8-9pm The Fun Guide to Astrology
Sounds pretty action packed, doesn't it? Here's what I actually did:
8am - woke up (oops)
9am - breakfast
10-11am - rested with my feet up in my room ("you know, I'm too full to workout right now, I'll do the Nia Dance class at 11 instead")
11-11:50am - Boat Cruise up the river/lake ("you know, I just don't feel like dancing and getting sweaty right now, so let's do something relaxing instead!")
12-12:25pm - Legs and Glutes workout ("um, OWWIE, and what's with the little 18 to 19 year olds that were the only others in the class???")
12:30 - lunch ("six hundred calories never tasted so good!")
1:30-4pm - napped, laid around my room contemplating Life, and read the magazine in my room ("oops again - I'd really intended to go to that Belly Dancing class, but I just overslept")
4-4:50pm Fun with Crafts: Bead a Bracelet ("what do you mean, there's no documentation on how to put the bracelet together? I have to be creative? But I don't know HOW!")
5-5:50pm Wine Tasting ("OK, this is more my speed!")
6-8pm Dinner with wine and great conversation (I met three ladies - Kerri, Tara, and Marcia - at the wine tasting and we just moved over to dinner afterwards. Turns out that Kerri and Marcia thought ahead and brought wine to the resort with them, so we all shared in their cleverness and had some great Australian wines with our dinners - yum!)
8pm-present - after sauntering over to my cottage after dinner, I fired up the trusty laptop to write my thoughts while they're fresh and here I've sat ever since.
While I was at dinner, I had the most incredible revelation about why I'm not sticking to my carefully planned out schedule, as I did during my last visit to the spa. Last time, I was down to 213 from 262 and was fanatically devoted to my workout program. Every minute of every day was crammed with physical activity and I even hit the treadmill for an hour each day. Of course, underpinning everything I did was the sense that just being me wasn't good enough unless I was also either thin or working hard to get there. Fitness didn't really enter into my thinking, nor did self love. Self love was something that thin girls had. Certainly there was no way to love yourself if you were fat! (Perish the thought.)
This time, and it didn't hit me until I was lazing around after breakfast, it's different. I came here with the same mentality about needing to work out, needing to do as many classes and physical activities as possible, but that's not what I need or want this time. Right here, right now, I'm already happy with myself and, although I need to lose weight and get stronger for my health, I don't need to kill myself in classes that make me feel uncoordinated or out of shape in order to do that. I can do some treadmilling, take a yoga or stretch class, and do those activities that sound fun to me and make me happy about moving my body rather than things I'm doing out of a sense of obligation.
I cannot express for you in words the way this realization makes me feel. It's as though I've been freed from this huge weight I've been carrying around (no fat jokes, please - LOL) and I can now really, truly relax and enjoy the next 5-1/2 days. I don't think it hurts that I've gotten to a really good place with TCB, either, but that's not the reason for the feeling.
As it turns out, I am the one making myself this happy. I was listening to a great audiobook on my iPod last week and the author talked about how we decide - each and every day - whether we're going to be happy or sad, whether to greet the day with happiness and expectation or dread and fear. I've heard that before but always wrote it off as psychobabble because I just couldn't believe that it was possible that I controlled whether or not I was happy. (That would have meant that, conversely, I was also the one making myself unhappy and how could I be the victim I knew myself to be if it was me that was doing this to myself???)
What I know now is that it's absolutely, 100% true and I've got the proof of it all around me. So, I'm choosing to be happy with myself, my life, and TCB, and the feeling of contentment is worth every mile I've had to walk to get here.
Comments
You sound content and carefree right now. Bravo!