As a child I used to be very sporty until I grew breasts, then it all seemed too painful (wrong bra, I now know!), so from my teenage years I became a couch potato. For 15 years my friends and family would say ‘lets go for a walk’ and I’d say ‘no thanks!’. I knew I needed to take exercise to have more energy and be healthier (everyone was always telling me!), so I bought running shoes. And didn’t run. I joined gyms and never went. I saw a neural linguistic programmer to help me re-programme my aversion to exercise. I even bought a subliminal “You Want to Exercise!” cd. I used to watch my sister, who said that if she didn’t exercise she felt like she was going mad, and think she was an alien! I knew I should exercise, I just could not motivate myself to do it.
It was only when I started eating raw food that I developed a much clearer understanding of why I hadn’t been able to motivate myself in the past. As the days turned into weeks of eating lots of raw food I started feeling lighter as I lost weight and full of energy as my body started to cleanse. I went from dragging myself around and sitting down a lot to feeling like I had excess energy that I needed to do something with. Aahhh, so this is what people were talking about!
When you’re body’s energy is directed into limiting the damage on your vital systems because of what your eating and other environmental factors, and when you’re carrying more weight than you’re naturally meant to carry, exercising can seem like the last thing you want to do. Even if you have the motivation and discipline to get yourself to the gym it still feels like you’re ‘making’ yourself. One of the unsung miracles of eating a high raw diet is that you will begin to WANT TO EXERCISE, without even trying. It certainly took me by surprise! I was thrilled. I’m still learning to re-identify myself as someone who wants to exercise regularly (I have 20 years of conditioning to undo!), but it’s becoming more and more of my new, empowered identity. I haven’t had a flat or fatless tummy since I was 10 years old, but Mark and I have set ourselves the challenge of getting a six pack this year. I CAN NOT imagine myself with a six pack, but I thought “what the ****, I’ll give it a go” and see if I can change this fundamental part of my self-identity. I’m excited, curious and motivated to see what happens on this journey of discovery, because anything is possible if we choose to believe it!
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