Fabulous Fitness: Dance with the One Who Brung Ya!

In general woman are fickle and easily persuaded by public opinion. Oh, I know that is a huge stereotype that we would like to refute . . . but, there is a lot of truth to it. If it were not true, diet companies would not have celebrity spokes people to promote their plans. If it were not true, we would not be drawn to every magazine cover that says "Drop a dress size in 8 days!" Or "Eat whatever you want and lose weight!" We are prone to quick fixes and pie in the sky dreams.

How many 'weight loss plans' have you been on for a week or two or even a month or two, where you started feeling good and seeing some differences . . . until you 'fell off the wagon' and then you looked around for a different wagon to jump on. Hey, wait, what was wrong with the wagon you were on? So, you got bumped off? It was a totally good wagon up until that point.

When I first started clean eating I felt marvelous from the get go. My blood pressure started coming down, my energy coming up, inches were melting away and my confidence was increasing daily. Then I hit a little blip and made some not wise choices. All the sudden I started questioning my ability to make good choices for myself. I felt desperate that I would never again make a good choice and that my ability to succeed would always be out of my reach if I did not find another plan to help me stay on track. Then a friend reminded me, hey, what you have been doing has been working great for you, why find another plan? Just go back to working the plan you were on!

Sometimes in life we hit rough waters and it takes all we have to row our own boats. When the storms of life hit and and knock out your oars or you lose the strength to paddle, either put more people in the boat to help row or ask some of your friends to help fill your sails for a while. You can't jump out of the boat every time the waters get rough! Row baby row! And if you need to, ask for a tow to shore.

Oh, boats, wagons, bumps, rough waters . . . so many analogies. The bottom line is it's not always the plan that needs to be changed, sometimes we just need to work the plan that we have. For me, the music I dance to is clean eating (clean source whole foods). I tweak what my plate looks like and from what part of the food chain I get my nutrition, but it is always clean, healthy, whole foods.

Recently, while traveling I switched my clean eating to look more like raw vegan three days in a row, then a day of pescatarian (eggs, fish), and then back to raw vegan for three days. This worked very well for me. The reasons I did this were two fold. One, I needed to eat lighter on the days I did hot yoga. Before class I wanted to be careful what I ate, after class I felt so good, I didn't want to defile my body in any way. The second reason was, while traveling I would often pack a lunch cooler for the whole day and be out biking, hiking, visiting, etc. I did not want to worry about dairy, meat or eggs spoiling in my lunch box. If fruits, nuts, veggies, berries and seeds get warm, they are still good to eat. The result of switching my diet was that I lost 6 lbs. in 18 days. I was also hiking, biking, etc. on most of those days. In the past six weeks I have lost 8 lbs and feel marvelous!

This girl will be twirling and dancing with the clean eating lifestyle forever! This is the way I want to feel for the rest of my life. Oh, hey, they are playing my song! Gotta go!