Several years ago I read a book called, "confessions of an organized homemaker." I really liked it but then I loaned it to my sister who thought the woman who wrote the book was some sort of lunatic. She was extremely detail oriented. However, my take away from that book doesn't really deal with how to organize anything but came about as she was explaining how to use a calendar system.
She was talking about how she had used all sorts of different systems. Each time she would get a new system and be convinced that this was the one that was going to work for her and she would stick to it. All the other systems she had tried just weren't right but this one would be different. YES, YES I thought. That is me. Oh I was just giddy with excitement as I read this section. I could not wait to find out what calendar system she used. What was the right one that I would use forever. Then suddenly she was talking about something else. Wait! She didn't tell me about the perfect fool proof calendar system. I had to go back and re-read the section because I totally missed the point the first time.
It wasn't about finding the perfect calendar system. It was about starting over again every time you failed until finally it clicks, you get in the habit and continue on in the face of day to day routines and boredom or changes and problems. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other. You keep getting back up on the horse. You don't toss out whole idea of the calendar system because YOU failed. The calendar is still needed, you just haven't developed the discipline to use it. Keep trying.
Life changing information.
Of course I must admit I am still not particularly good at scheduling my life but I have developed a system over the years that works pretty well for me. And I continue to work at it and improve.
I have seen the truth of this practice in my exercise routine. Once upon a time I was a wanna be exerciser. I would buy a video and do it for a couple months until I was bored. I would go on walks regularly for a few weeks until it got cold or I got a cold or it rained one morning and I quit entirely. But then one day I started running and I liked it. And I kept doing it. And when I would forget to run for a couple weeks I didn't give up on the idea all together I just got back out and ran again. Now several years later I am a regular exercisers. Even if I go a month without breaking a sweat, which has happened several times over the 6 years I have been running, I don't see it as an end, I just get back out there.
I love advice I can apply to so many areas of my life. I am sure some of you who know me personally have heard me tell you about this book and revelation. So here I am telling myself this advice again. Reminding myself that when you fail, even if it has been months since you were on track, you just go back to it.
I have been feeling sick lately. I hate feeling sick. Especially when I know it is self inflicted. I know certain foods make me feel sick if eaten too often yet apparently I have no sense of restraint. So here I am totally toxic with foods my body hates.
Last year, really almost 2 years ago, I was on the Endo diet for 3 months. It was challenging but I must confess I felt great. Years ago when this whole food connection was made my diet wasn't nearly as restrictive and I also felt great. I know what I need to do, know what I can and cannot eat. Yet I don't do it. Do I like getting sick?
I have all the right answers and can play ball with all the crazy granola friends I have but lately I feel like a fraud. I am embarrassed to tell people we are a dairy free family when we don't even pretend to avoid dairy anymore. I seem incapable of passing up a plate of french fries or a bowl of ice cream and have the weight gain to prove it.
Having gotten so sick I had to skip church a couple weeks ago, I spent this past week feeling a little hungry as I stopped eating what I knew I shouldn't but didn't have time or energy to go buy what I knew I should. Yet I feel so much better, more energetic as a hungry but healthily fed person than I did as a full person eating junk.
So just as I have done in running, just as the writer of the book did with her calendar system, I will keep working on developing a food system that works for me, my family and our lifestyle. It isn't that I have done the wrong diet in the past, it isn't an impossible task before me it is just something that I must keep working at until it becomes a part of my life and when the diet does start to go bad I just get up the next morning and go back to my healthy eating lifestyle because that will be my normal.
One foot in front of the other. Good bye unhealthy eating habits, hello healthy, happy and energetic life.
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