The New Year, New Learning List: Invest in Your Health!
Happy New Year! The New Year can be an interesting time. Sometimes, I find myself completely inspired by the "newness" of it. Other times, I am filled with dread! I find myself wondering if I will exceed my expectations for the year. I wonder if I messed up so badly the previous year that there is no way that the new year could be a great one for me. So, this year, I decided to take the pressure off. Instead of doing New Year's resolutions, I have chosen to create a New Year Learning List. Each month, I will be exploring each "lesson" in depth. So, without further ado, here is lesson #1......
1) Holistic health is wealth. Strive to be physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy. Invest in yourself!
This is HUGE for me. For years, I would say, I am going to lose weight. For years, I believed that something must be inherently wrong with me. I would work out for HOURS at the gym. I would try every diet that was possible. It was not until recently that I realized that I was assuming that I already knew what I needed to know to reach my goal. I thought that everyone was born with this general knowledge and that I was supposed to know the "formula". Since I could not get this formula right, I began to punish myself. I would lower my self-esteem, the very thing that I needed to tap into the motivation to learn about myself. So, not only did I stay physically unhealthy, I also remained emotionally unwell. Because I was emotionally unwell, I found it difficult to learn, thus making me mentally unbalanced. As I began to see all of the pieces falling apart, I also noticed my faith diminishing. I thought that God was being cruel to me, giving everyone else something that I desired with my whole heart.
It took me quite a while to realize that I cannot just invest in one part of my health. In order to sustain a positive change, I had to engage in ALL areas of health and I had to learn where to start. For me, I had to seek support in becoming emotionally healthy before reaching my physical goal. I had to challenge my preconceived notion that something was inherently wrong with me. I had to learn to celebrate the milestones, and each small step towards my goal. As I began to feel better emotionally, I noticed that I improved mentally as well. I was able to think clearly and create a realistic plan for myself. I could be objective about where I was and where I wanted to be. I could accept feedback from my supports helping me achieve my goal. Once I stopped assuming things and accepted where I was, I was able to find areas of my life to adjust in order to burn the fat that was holding me down. I realized that fat loss is 70% nutrition and doing cardio everyday was good for the heart, but not the way to build the muscle that I needed to keep burning fat. I learned that I needed to eat several nutritious meals per day to speed up my metabolism. I also learned alternatives to my love of all creamy foods (shout out to Greek yogurt and avocados)!
Once I began to see changes, such as being more energetic, clothes fitting better, my faith also began to grow again. I realized that I was not forgotten, I was not the exception. Rather, I had to learn first in order to practice the habits that would help me achieve my goals. In a few months, I lost thirty pounds. In 2017, I plan to lose more, but instead of making another New Year's resolution, I am going to keep reflecting on the lessons I learned on holistic health last year and commit to learning more about my mind, body, and spirit this year so that I can be holistically well.
If you are trying to be holistically well, I encourage you to seek healthy supports, learn to see yourself where you are, and build yourself up daily. Investments take time to compound, but once they start building, you can have exponential growth-once you know where to start.
Where are you starting your investments this year?