Ultimate Triumph

I was recently asked about the title of my blog.

The phrase comes from a speech that Teddy Roosevelt once made.  See what you think...

“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these, wins the splendid ultimate triumph.”

How do those words strike you?  Exciting, shivery wonder... or dreary, difficult drudgery?

When I first read them, they made me want to go charging up a hill at high speed and break into an Italian aria at the top!  A mission! A purpose! A victory!

Maybe that’s because I know a little bit about Teddy Roosevelt, so I understand the heart that expressed itself in those words.

Did you know that he was a sickly child with severe asthma who suffered near-fatal attacks over and over in his childhood?  He was a fragile little creature not expected to reach adulthood. 

But he had a curious mind and a great love of nature and a tenacity that drove him beyond his illness.  He read voraciously and became a student of life.  He put himself on a regimen of exercise to build his strength, and after having been bullied by some older boys, took up boxing lessons.

Roosevelt became a naturalist, an author, a soldier, an Amazon explorer, a larger-than-life, ebullient optimist.  He had adventures enough for half a dozen movies.  I’ll let this picture tell the story... he’s riding a bull moose (not known to be one of nature’s pussycats) across a river.  Umm.  File that under “D” for Danger.

The “strenuous life” was all there was for Teddy.  If he hadn’t taken that attitude, he would have been dead before his 18^th birthday.  Instead he had a glorious adventure of a life.  It was full of setbacks and heartbreaks as well, but it was a resplendent life.

When we limp along in ill health, we’re missing the wondrous exuberance of a full life.  This culture is not looking out for our health!  If we don’t take personal charge of what we eat and what we do with our bodies, we will be that sickly child that gets beat up by life.

And it’s hard work.  That’s the bottom line, and the real reason for my blog.  Weight Watchers, bless its corporate heart, tries very hard to make weight loss pleasant and palatable for the greatest number of people.  But we can sometimes be lulled into thinking that it is therefore going to be easy.

It’s not.  And as long as we expect it to be and hope for it to be, we’ll flounder; maybe lose 5 pounds, relax, fall back into old habits, resentfully surrender again, lose that same 5 pounds... you know the drill.

It’s hard work.  It’s “toil and effort, labor and strife”.  It’s even “bitter toil” sometimes. 

And it is so worth it.  With all my heart, I wish for all of us that “splendid, ultimate triumph”... our health, the gift of being fully alive.

Read My Lips

Don't you inwardly groan whenever the subject of weight loss comes up?  In conversation or on tv or in a magazine? The mere mention of it makes me a bit melancholy.

We have a lot of resistance to the whole idea of weight loss and fitness, even though it's one of the things we want the most!  How can that be??

I think it's because our minds are at war with themselves.  There is the "comfort" part of us that wants to eat hot bread, salty chips and cookies until we're wrapped up in them like a warm blanky.  In the opposite corner is the "mature" part of us that wants to be able to move freely, wear cute clothes and be full of energy.

So doesn't it make sense to try to reconcile the two parts of our mind so that we're all-ahead-full in pursuit of our health goals?

That's why I think a big component of weight loss and fitness is your BRAIN rather than your body.  After all, your body just follows along with whatever flowchart your brain comes up with.  We may not be spending nearly enough time training our brain for weight loss, bypassing it straight to the body.

One of the easiest ways to engage your brain for weight loss is… reading.  Get some good books about health, fitness, weight management and scatter them all around your house, wherever you spend time: near your comfy chair, by the bedside, next to the computer, even in the bathroom.  Everywhere!  Then as you go through your day, pick them up and read a few pages while you're just sitting there.

Good books are Portable Game Changers.  If you were to read about weight loss three or four times a day for a few weeks, I fully expect you would lose some weight without even thinking too much about it, because your subconscious mind has been engaged.  It's deep down there, working away at a goal without you much noticing.  You have set it on its track by what you've read.

Obviously, you'll lose weight faster when you fully engage both your conscious and subconscious but the power of the mind is so great, I think you could lose weight on reading alone!

If you're currently on a dietary program, or you're tracking or otherwise formally attempting to lose weight, try adding books to your diet (read them, don't eat them) and see if it doesn't smooth the way.

There are tons of good ones but here's a quick tour through some of my favorites.

More reading, less eating!

The Month of the Kid

This month, February, I'm on a transformation expedition!  It's one month until I can take my new feet out on a maiden run.  I spent all last year working up to surgery and recovering from surgery, and soon it will be time to reap the benefits of surgery!  

To give myself the greatest chance of success in March (earliest date my doctor will allow me to try running), I'm spending February in concentrated, dedicated focus… highest-quality nutrients, in weight-reducing amounts, with strength and flexibility training and increasing aerobic exercise.  

That all sounds a bit UN-fun, so to balance it out, I'm going back to my childhood.  

Remember your own childhood?  When you were little, did you ever want sit still for hours at a time? Could you even be FORCED to sit still for hours at a time?  Would it ever have occurred to you to overeat as a recreational activity?  

Think about it.  What did you love to do when you were little?  What gave you the most excitement? Chances are it wasn't food. Chances are it involved the outdoors and had some element of physical activity… but we didn't call it anything as joy-numbing as "physical activity."  It was PLAYING, as in "I'm going outside to play" or "Can you come out and play?"  What are your best memories from your childhood?

I remember playing so intensely that our parents had to drag us in when the sun set.  I remember the freedom of finally getting a two-wheeler, and biking farther than my mom could track us.  I remember staying at the swimming pool so long that my fingers and toes were pickled, and belly-flopping until I was nearly flayed, learning how to dive.  

It seems that all the habits that sabotage our health developed much later.  As children, we were always on the go, and food was not something we really spent much time thinking about.  It just sort of appeared at the proper times.  We didn't have to think about calories or hedonic hunger or the food pyramid or fat grams or ghrelin or leptin or Points.

As children, we ate to live.  It takes an adult to think up something as weird as living to eat!

So I'm going back to my childhood this month.  This is my icon.  I'm remembering this little person, who never realized that the bike was too big, who was always looking for the next adventure, who only came in for meals when called, for whom bedtime was a serious imposition.

I wish you a month of play, too, as you remember the little person you have inside of you, who never had to think about pursuing a healthy lifestyle because you were too busy living it.