Choices create the path to our future

May 22, 2021

Our choices create the path to our future. Knowing this, are our current choices creating the path to where we want to go or have we created a detour? Just as we sometimes need to recenter after zooming in or out when using Google maps, sometimes we forget where we are in relation to where we are going in life or towards a goal and we need to recenter.

I used to choose not to make medical appointments to take care of my body, reasoning that I didn’t have the time. Those choices affected my health. Six years before I retired I suffered an injury and was forced to start taking care of myself. A year before I retired I underwent a long overdue heart procedure so that I could exercise and release the weight I had steadily gathered over the previous 25 years. My goal was to release the weight and get in shape before I retired so that I could walk long distances. When do we typically walk long distances? When we travel. I underwent the procedure in July of 2019. My planned retirement date was July of 2020.

Why the terms gathered and released instead of gained and lost?

I have not found a term I like better than gathered yet. Gain is used as a positive term, but most of the time in relation to weight it is not something we wish to do. Lost is a term that is often connected to the term found. I do not want to gain weight and I do not want to find it again either. I would rather release the weight.

The procedure I underwent was successful and most of the issues went away. A minor issue remains, but it does not keep me from exercising. In June of 2019 I changed the way I ate and in October 2019 I started intermittant fasting to release weight and started High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) to increase my heart health. Between June 2019 and March 2020 I released 17 pounds. Between March 2020 and November 2020 I released another 15 pounds. Then I retired to care for my mother and mother-in-law, decreased my fasting and gathered 10 pounds back. Between March and May 2021 I released 6 of the 10 lbs I had regathered. It is now July 2021 and I have released all of the weight I regathered and one more pound to boot. I have 6 pounds left to release to reach my final goal. I know from experience releasing it could be slow or quick. I have learned more recently that I release more weight when I am working towards life dreams (currently that means writing my book) and when I stop worrying about the details because “God’s got it!”

I have learned a number of things from this health journey:

1. You know that feeling you get when you haven’t eaten for a few hours, that hungry feeling? I have learned that the hungry feeling does not get worse the longer I fast. It is always there in the background, but it doesn’t get worse. I fast for 20 hours each day. I found it comforting that I didn’t feel more hungry as the day went on and I have made peace with that hungry feeling, it is not an enemy to me or my body.
2. When I fast I am not “starving” my body. My body will continue to meet its energy needs by burning fat and that is exacty what I want it to do. This mindset change made a huge difference to me.
3. I can do all sorts of physical activity while I am fasting. I do cardio exercises right after I get dressed in the morning. I do physical work in the morning. I eat at 4pm. The only time I really need to watch the intensity of my physical activity is after 1pm, before that I am fine.
4. Overall, I am less tired now than I used to be. I do not know if that is because I am more fit, because I weigh less or because I eat less. It does not matter to me why. I love my afternoon naps, but I am also fine with feeling less of a need for them.
5. Fasting and exercising have become part of my daily routine, they are no longer decisions I make anew each day. When I switched to making the commitment to these practices up front and building them as habits connected to other habits (I exercise right after I get dressed in the morning) they became automatic and I stopped asking myself if I was going to do them that day, I just did them. The number thrown around most often is that it takes 21 days to make a new activity a habit. In my case it took over a year to finally stop asking myself if I was going to exercise today and a year and a half before I stopped asking myself if I was going to fast today. I do wish I had learned this lesson sooner, but at least I am now applying this thinking to other decisions I make for my life so I can incorporate those practices sooner than I did these ones.

So how does this learning relate to reaching goals we have for our lives?

In my case releasing weight and getting fit were goals I had made to prepare for my retirement. Our plans were to travel. We travel light, carry-on baggage only, and do lots of walking. That means being fit. One day we will travel again and I will be ready.

In relation to other goals you have for your life you will also have to make those up front decisions that help you move towards your goals one step at a time. Make the decision today to work on a piece of your goal every week. Work hard to find a current habit to attach it to and be specific. A couple of examples are, “On Sunday evenings after we clean up from dinner we will review our progress towards our goal from this past week, then set our goal for what we will achieve in the coming week” or “On Monday mornings after the kids have started school I will work on the next step of my goal.”

That is your decision point, you will never have to make that decision again. Block out time for your activity in your dayplanner each week. Make a list of what needs to be done for your next step and beside each block of time write down an item from your list so you know what you are going to do during that block of time. The final thing you need to do is create a visual reminder and place it near the current habit so you don’t forget to do this new activity. After a few weeks you won’t need the reminder anymore and you can remove it. Remember that when you read that reminder you are not making a decision to do that activity because you already made your decision, what you are doing is simply reminding yourself that it is time to do that activity next.

Our choices create the path to our immediate and further out futures so lets make sure the path we are creating is leading to the future we want for ourselves!

Velvet

Making the choices I need to in order to live with More Joy everyday