I was chatting with my sister this morning about her physical transformation and we were comparing strengths and trouble zones.
As we were remarking on how different our struggles are even when having the same parents she said, " As I've been studying, I've learned that the areas we store fat are determined in utero. We can't change WHERE our bodies store fat. The only thing we can do is build muscle which decreases the fat percentage and reduces the excess in those trouble areas." Our culture is obsessed with losing weight but weightloss alone isn't the answer. Depriving or punishing ourselves can only last so long, it's not a foundation we can build on and it certainly is never done out of love. When we fall in love with treating ourselves well and becoming stronger, we tap into that desire to work hard and revel in the progress we achieve! Because what is done in love is done well! 💗 We have to transform from the inside out. We have to strengthen our minds first and strength our bodies second and neither of those things can be done well, if at all, outside of love. Gut check! What is your " why"? What is your current motivation to work out and watch your food intake? Is it a joy or do you dread it? Trace that emotionally backwards to the thoughts behind your why. What needs to change to make it an act of love?
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Something I shared with our group today:
I saw this quote today and it hit home for me. SO often when we get started with our health journey it's from a place of wanting to turn our bodies from prisons to palaces without realizing that the prison is internal. Our bodies are only a reflection of how we treat them in conjunction with what they need from us. Meaning that you probably know another woman that eats TERRIBLY and is a size 2 with perfect skin and you want to smack her because if you breathe around chocolate you gain 5 pounds! Some people's bodies handle poor treatment better than others but it is NOT a reflection of HEALTH. Nor is a 20 pound weight gain necessarily a reflection of poor nutrition. I have friends with auto immune diseases and food sensitivities that gain weight seemingly overnight without binging on junk. Our bodies aren't the prisons, our minds are. We have to stop focusing on what we "should" look like, or how unfair it is that other people don't struggle the way we do, and instead start paying attention to what will set us free, from the thoughts we dwell on to the foods that we eat. We are not here to diet. We aren't even here to lose weight. We are here to get in tune with our bodies and heal! Some ladies are palace-ready the moment they start! They have dealt with the emotional junk in their lives and they are starting self care from a place of self awareness and truth. That was NOT my story! I started trying to turn my body from a prison to a palace and in the process of self care realized it was my mind that was holding me captive. All of this has taken me longer than other women but IT DOESN'T MATTER! It doesn't matter how fast or slow you are healing, it only matters that you ARE healing! Instead of getting irritated that you are still struggling with food addictions, or working out, or even speaking truth to yourself, just acknowledge that there is a problem! That was the first step for me. I had to admit that my body wasn't the issue, the way I thought about and treated my body was the issue. Start there. Work on rejecting lies. Work at replacing them with truth. If you want something terrible for yourself to the point you are feeling angry and deprived, eat it! But then pay attention to how you feel physically and emotionally afterward! Begin to recognize what your body is communicating to you. Notice when you feel bloated, or nauseous, or jittery, or even emotional. You will start to see how you are building your own prison being at war with your own body. As you become aware of how you feel after the junk, you WILL stop wanting a lot of it. I promise you that! Stop feeling like a failure if you aren't sailing through this process. You have to be on the same team as your body! It fights for you, it begs for nutrients so it can heal you, so it can grow and feed babies, so it can fight diseases and illness. BE. IT'S. ALLY. Work on having a mind that is palace ready, so no prison can hold you! You ARE stronger than your genetics, you ARE stronger than any disease you might have, you ARE meant to have unity within your mind, body, and soul. We are all working towards THAT goal in different ways. Keep working on what that means for you without getting discouraged by the scale. I had a lot of mental work to do, others in the group had the hard task of figuring out what foods, even healthy 21 Day Fix approved foods, were tearing down their bodies. Still others are walking through emotional trauma and having to forgive and make the conscious effort to move forward from pain. Our prisons are different but we were all made for a palace! Give yourself the freedom to figure out what that means for you! Did anything come to mind while you were reading this? Share! <3 Did you know that if a plane is only 1 degree off of it's trajectory that as it flies from the west coast to the east coast of the US it will end up over 300 miles off course? The pilot has to be in a constant state of reevaluating and making tiny adjustments to stay on course. It's very similar in our health journey!
The greatest skill I've learned along this journey is that perseverance and endurance are so much more important than perfection! We can't be perfect, the winds of life push us around, our emotions get the best of us and we have to reevaluate in tiny ways day to day. ( Minute to minute somedays!) Consistently building better habits is more effective than trying to overhaul your life in a week! If you aren't exercising at all right now, starting walking three times a week for 15 minutes and let it grow as it becomes part of your schedule. When your all purpose white flour runs out, swap it out for a healthier flour. Slowly over time, stop buying items that don't align with your goals and replacing them with items that do! Plan veggies at every meal meal! Drink more water! One day you'll look at your pantry and your life and see you've transformed one small decision at a time. Don't tackle the biggest things first. If you have a severe coffee addiction, that's not the place to start! Maybe start trimming back on the creamer or order a smaller size but let the small choices snowball in big changes until your foundation is solid enough to tackle your emotional and physiological addictions. Don't let perfectionism hold you back from getting started! The smallest decision can change your entire trajectory! It doesn't matter how long it takes you to get there, it only matters that you end up where you want to be! 💗 Yesterday we started our preseason week where we take the simple steps to plan our month out and we start our plan on Monday! It's not too late to join us! Message me to for more info! 💗 Last night there was a shooting at our local Walmart, the one I get my oil changed at, the one I take my kids to. We are safe. We weren't there but we could hear the sirens from our house.
While we were sitting there waiting for news, waiting to hear from our friends, waiting for answers, I realized that I spend way too much time waiting. I so often put off living out of fear. Fear of what could happen, fear of what other people might think, fear of rejection and failure. In this moment, instead of being fearful of life, it made me fearful of a life unlived. It lit a fire in me to do more with mine. I'm not guaranteed any number of days, so each one is precious. Each one should be lived with vision, intention, and purpose. Relationships, human connection, serving each other, growing...love. In the end, I want to have loved to the very best of my ability. As I grieve with my community today, I'm resolving to do more, to be present, and to step outside my comfort zone, to push past fear and to love well. This quote struck me today. A couple of years ago, I was living to be numb. I kept busy looking perfect on the outside. My house was spotless, my children were immaculate, I kept quiet and tried to only say things that wouldn't show people I was different. I avoided judgement but I was also missing joy! I kept people out and I tried to stay numb.
There weren't many tears then but I wasn't happy either. I was afraid mostly. Afraid of being seen and found wanting. Since I broke out of that prison, I've cried a lot! I let the sad out, but mostly I cry happy tears! I get so overwhelmed with love and joy because I'm really living! Yes, there are risks and yes I get judged but I'd rather be living and get a few haters than live a bland, unfilling, unremarkable life! That's what I was doing. If you knew you only had today, what would you do with it, what would you want to communicate, what legacy would you want to leave behind? What impact would you want to make on the world? I want to encourage emotional and physical healing on a large scale. I want everyone that comes in contact with me to feel more empowered and free to be who they are. I want them to walk away seeing their worth more clearly! So everyday that's my focus and living with that mission gives me chills! And when I see my life affecting others in that way I am brought to tears! Healing tears that come from my pain becoming my strength.💗 Live to the point of tears, my friends! Whether it's a lesson you learn or an adventure you have, the experiences you gain grow you and create a life that serves the world. "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ". Theodore Roosevelt Yesterday was awesome! I spent the majority of the day trying on everything in my closet and making decisions on how to trim down so I could easily find things I want to wear as well as part with things that weren't me that I hadn't touched in ages! My closet feels organized and my decisions today were a breeze! I have received a ton of messages from you ladies asking about certain pieces I posted, where I shop, and how I decided what to keep. My weakness might be organization but, after 15 years as a buyer, creating a wardrobe is a strength! I know there is a lot of talk about capsule wardrobes right now and I think they are great...for some people! I LOVE clothes and while my style is definitely casual I have a lot of boots and sweaters and jackets and things I truly love and a capsule wardrobe is just not going to work for me! However, I did break it down into categories and realized the reason I didn't wear certain pieces I love is because my wardrobe was missing some staple pieces. Over time, things get worn out or lost, or don't fit anymore and that can break down the usefulness of the things we have. We also have to realize when we are holding onto something emotionally that we will never wear again So I am going live on Friday at 6pm EST to talk about creating a wardrobe. I'll touch on how to find your stores, how to get the best deals, how many items in each category is reasonable, what staples everyone should invest in. and discuss how to find your style if you feel lost! Is your closet full but you feel like you never have anything to wear? Do you feel like you need things but when you go shopping you don't come back with items that expand your wardrobe? Do shopping trips make you feel worse about yourself so you avoid them? Or do you shop all the time and feel like you waste time and money and still aren't in love with your wardrobe? Come join us Friday night in our Heart of a Warrior group as we continue to get organized with Creating Your Wardrobe 101! If you can't make it live, the call will be posted for you to catch up on later! Link below! https://www.facebook.com/groups/316784275426292/ This morning one of my friends posted this quote from Tish Harrison Warren's book, "Liturgy of the Ordinary: sacred practices in everyday life"
"When I brush my teeth I am pushing back, in the smallest of ways, the death and chaos that will inevitably overtake my body. I am dust polishing dust. And yet I am not only dust. When God formed people from the dust, he breathed into us-through our lips and teeth-his very breath. So I will fight against my body's fallenness. I will care for it as best I can, knowing that my body is sacred and that caring for it (and for the other bodies around me) is a holy act. I'll hold onto the truth that my body, in all its brokenness, is beloved, and that one day it will be, like the resurrected body of Christ, glorious." This eloquently puts into words the perspective change that happened not only in my mind, but in my heart! Showing up for myself, fighting against my body's fallenness, treating my body as sacred, it became a holy act. It allowed me to see my worth, to feel deep gratitude, and ultimately LOVE my body with all it's imperfections and flaws. We cannot reach this point when we view our body as the enemy, that which holds us back from acceptance and happiness. It's only when see it as a miracle, the vessel that was breathed into life and allows us to connect with others mentally, emotionally, and physically, that we can rise up as a warrior to fight for it and to encourage others to do the same! The accepted perspective is that if a person looks a certain way how they treat their bodies doesn't matter. It's about youthful attractive appearances and yet that perspective tears us down. It leads to eating orders, unhappiness, and isolation. Some of the greatest warriors I know, the ones that show up for themselves, aren't a size two. They struggle with illnesses that threaten to steal the quality of their life and they responded with a battle cry! They grasp what is eluding most of our culture: the quality of this life is affected by how we treat our body. Those of us blessed with good health can get complacent about this and it steals our joy! Caring for our bodies because they are a gift and because they are ours and not to punish them into an unattainable mold changes the way we feel about them and how we feel about a healthy lifestyle. When we decide to stop hiding our imperfections, to stop trying to look shiny and be admired and instead choose to be real and to truly love ourselves, we find that true health means the combination of a healthy mind, a healthy body, a healthy soul. When one is off balance, it affects the others. And so, we must fight because true health is freedom!💗 We just started our Freedom Focused Challenge Group today and there is still time to join! If you have seen your healthy journey as a deprivation or a chore, if you feel that your worth is tied to your pants size, if you feel isolated and disconnected from others, consider joining us. Chasing admiration and living in fear of others seeing flaws is exhausting! Living in freedom is what we truly need! 💗 Message me for more info! Growing up, one of the things my family excelled in was communication. My mom did a great job of making us work out conflict and confide in one another. Those of us that were articulate helped those communicate that were not and those that were not learned to grow in that area. We learned to show up and deal with the mess instead of ignoring it.
While we may have rolled our eyes a few times, it's apparent now that the trust and loyalty that was built in those conversations has led to an unwavering commitment to be there for one another. We all know that one phone call is all it takes for support, help, and encouragement! My mom saw the importance of health, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and she worked tirelessly to provide us with the skills to create that within our relationships. Each new stage of my life has required me to come back to these principles and remember that in order for life to be joyful and fulfilling things to be right for everyone. I lost sight of that as a wife and mother. I was making sure everyone had what I thought they needed at the expense of myself. When in reality what my family needed was a wife and mother that was healthy inside and out! When I was depleted I was emotionally frustrated, quick to become angry, unhappy with my body, eating to be comforted, checking out mentally, too exhausted to participate the way I wanted to and I was judging myself harshly as well. I lived in shame all the time! When I added myself back on to the priority list EVERYTHING began to change. It wasn't just a healthy body that I needed it was a healthy life! One with balance. If we only focus on how we look and what we should or should not be eating, we are missing the bigger picture! We aren't tending to the reasons we run to food, alcohol, or even drugs. YOU matter! You deserve to spend time doing things you enjoy, you need to invest in your growth as an individual, you need to invest in your marriage and relationships, you need to invest in a healthy body both in food choices and exercise, you need to see yourself as part of your family dynamic and not just the power source that keeps it moving! If you are looking around your life and realizing your relationships aren't ministering to you , it's time to do a gut check! Are YOU treating you well? Are you addressing your needs or are you expecting others to fill them? Are you growing as an individual? Are you communicating what's going on internally with others? Even having a strong foundation in this area, I found myself struggling because I stopped seeing my worth and stopped caring for myself. This is why in our challenge group we focus on personal development and set personal goals! Fitness has to be only one part of a healthy life. If it becomes the sole focus, it's one more more thing we are expecting perfection in, instead of being an act of self love! Instead of a freedom it becomes a prison. We are about to start our November group where we will talk about being freedom focused and living in grace! If you can relate to my story or feel frustrated, angry, or sad on a regular basis, I invite you to join us! This was one of the first things I did to invest in myself and it completely changed my self perspective! I love sharing it with others! 💗 Message me for more info or just to talk! I'd love to be a listening ear and share more of my story with you! I read a post today that got my blood boiling early this morning. It was someone else in the health and wellness industry. She shared a blog post she had written about how weight gain in women could lead to divorce and how it was our responsibility as women to look the way we did when we got married...or else.
I'm not going to go into the finer points of this argument today. I want to talk about the bigger picture. I want to give you some tools against this kind of marketing. These kind of messages play on fear. They attack the heart of an insecurity and drag you on a choose your own adventure story ( remember those?) that are not based on anything but shame. The message is that you are not worthy in your current state and you need to do something or buy something or look a certain way to gain value. On your health journey, pay attention to how messages make you feel! It's ok to recognize that some aspects of your life needs to change but does the person speaking give you hope and inspire you? Do they encourage you and make you want to heal? Or do they fill you with shame and cause you to act out of self loathing? I have seen hundreds of women start health journeys since I started coaching and something I've learned is that timing is important. You have to do this for YOU. This is a journey of self discovery and self respect. It's you taking care of you and it does improve everything in your life but if you aren't ready than someone shaming you isn't going to make you ready. It's easy to believe that shame is just the bad feeling we get from being "bad". It's not. It's the lie that we aren't enough. Conviction is productive. It's the acknowledgement that we need to change and that's helpful! But when the oppressive waves of shame wash over you, that should be a warning to you. That is the prison we can reject. If you hear a message on health or parenting or beauty or ANYTHING that leaves you feeling worthless or hopeless or shamed, that is not someone to follow. One of the ways I protect myself is to imagine hearing it said to someone I love. I am a powerhouse of fury in defending others from lies but sometimes it's hard to do that for myself in a moment of fear or shame. What would your response be if you heard someone say that to a loved one? Think it all the way through! Don't be held captive by fear and shame. Don't be manipulated into hustling for your worth! Follow leaders that make you excited to grow! ( End rant 😉) Phillip and I have been married 10 years today and every word of this quote is true! lol We have some amazing fun years and then we have had years where we have painfully fought for each other, learned about one another and accepted each other all over again. It hasn't been ten years of uninterrupted marital bliss but it has been the relationship that has grown me more than any other in my life!
In marriage there are these moments when you are looking at your spouse and you realize you are both thinking, " How did we get here?" Life is hard, emotions are high, and neither of you can fully communicate your perspective or can't see the others side. It's in those moments that the tenacity comes in and you simply choose each other again even when you have no idea how you will make it past that issue or that moment in time. I stand here, still married to Phillip, because every time we hit the tough places we have BOTH chosen love, trust, partnership, tolerance, or tenacity, whatever the circumstances required, over our pride. It hasn't been easy, but it has been worth it! Part of our success is that we have fought through these battles with ourselves first. We cannot expect to gain love, trust, respect, tenacity, and tolerance from another person if we can't even give those things to ourselves. When we put all our needs on another fallible sinful person, we are going to get crush beneath the weight of disappointment. Our spouse cannot love us perfectly anymore than we can love them perfectly. I've been a Christian most of my life. I saw the evil in my heart and understood my need for forgiveness. I believed that my heart could be changed, but in all that, my whole life, I didn't see my worth. I was always trying to make up for what I felt I lacked. My failures devastated me! It wasn't long before I was more concerned with what people saw than I was about what was truly there because I felt so unworthy and so fearful of being judged. I brought THAT into my marriage. Let me tell you, it's exhausting and you can't keep it up! While Phillip and I have fought for our relationship, that mentality made me insecure. I started to feel shame for doing anything for myself. I lived in a constant state of hustling for my worth and there was nothing he could do to help me. It was a battle I had to fight for myself. He did serve me though! He saw I needed a change. He saw I wasn't caring for myself and he pushed me to make time for that. He couldn't make me see my worth but he encouraged me to create an environment where I could heal! And healing is what took place! The most beautiful thing happened! The moment that I decided I wanted to heal, doors started opening! An acquaintance started a book club and I stepped outside my comfort zone and went, I fell in love with reading again and made time for that in my life. I realized how unhappy I was with my body and a friend reached out and shared this amazing program and what was working for her and through it I began truly caring for my body and my heart changed! One day I looked into the mirror and saw what was really there! A beautiful worthy soul with a heart full of purpose! My worth didn't change. My perspective changed. In those moments I chose to love and trust myself. I chose to be my own partner, I chose tolerance in my weak moments and chose to keep going when I failed. It's a perspective that I know saved my marriage! It also saved my life, maybe not in the physical sense but I am no longer living to be numb, filling my emotions with food, and distracting myself with work and entertainment. I'm not wasting my life because I am afraid to fail. I'm failing all over the place and growing like wildflowers and its a messy beautiful life! October 26, 2007 was one of the best days of my life! It was the first day we said yes to each other as husband and wife! What I didn't know was how broken we were as individuals, how marriage would reveal that, and how this partnership of souls would lead to healing! We believe a lot of lies in our culture. We believe we aren't whole without a romantic relationship. We believe that we aren't in one because we aren't worthy. We believe that the one we are in isn't the real thing because we don't feel the same way about that person anymore. We believe we can fill the void with things or experiences, or other people. We think if we do enough, or say enough, or look a certain way, we can inspire people to love us. What I have learned in my 38 years is this: If you are currently unhappy, you have to look inward. That feeling you are chasing cannot be gained. Joy is something that pours out of heart that is grateful and at peace. I have witnessed this joy in people that have lost EVERYTHING. It can't be acquired, it's something that is grown. A marriage is made of of two people and you can't control your spouse ( believe me, I've tried 😂) There are no guarantees in relationships but in my experience when I was struggling and I saw Phillip choose growth, I was encouraged to grow. And when he was struggling and he saw me choosing growth, he was also encouraged to grow. We've been climbing a steep cliff and reaching down to give each other a hand as we climb but that relationship means choosing to keep getting stronger and climbing each day. That's why I show up here every day, because I want that for YOU! My marriage, my health, my self perspective, my body, my entire life improved when I saw myself for what I was, a child of God full of purpose, on a mission and created to reach my highest potential! The same is true of YOU! Be willing to show up and build love, trust, partnership, tolerance, and tenacity in your own life, they will serve you well! 💗 Happy Anniversary Phillip Reel! I'm so grateful for the life we've built and the people we've become through it all! I still choose you a million times over! 😘 |
Author"And Aubrey was her name. A not so very ordinary girl or name."(Or so says David Gates ;) I'm a wife to Phillip, a mother to Scarlett and Juliet. We live in the beautiful city of Thornton, Co. I'm a recovering red bull addict. I love to read. I hate to cook. I seek to be inspired and also to inspire others. I am a Beachbody Coach on a quest to be truly healthy mind, soul, and body and challenge others to do the same. Archives
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