Loose Skin Is Proof Of Progress1/8/2019 After having grown up a fat kid I can say that I still see myself that way.
My Past I was always very self conscious about my weight. I was the kid with the the shirt on in the pool. The kid with the huge cloths to try and cover myself up. I learned to be funny but not because I like it but because it was a distraction. i learned that the words you have such a cute face and lets just be friends are far worse than insults. I learned that people can be cruel. I also learned that the more you try to hide the more attention you draw not only to the thing your hiding but to your own lack of confidence. My recent weight loss transformation has been good and bad. I got down to a crazy light weight. One that was unsustainable. It was fun to be in such a small body but my real goal was to get rid of my loose skin. I wanted to see if it was possible. I ended up down more than 100 pounds from my highest weight in life and 45 from my start. I have thought that a body that is skinny then gets fat can return to skinny easier than a body that was never skinny growing up. I don't have science to prove it but it seems to be the case in terms of loose skin. You see around my body and waist especially I have stretch makes all over. these are skin wounds that never quit return to normal. I have tried everything you can imagine for this. Even at my low 166 weight I still had the loose skin. I spend most of my time learning for health but more brain health as that is my real passion. Being worried about loose skin doesn't seem to be a good use of thought but it is something I think of every time I see myself now. You see I don't have any fat to speak of on my body except around this loose skin area. I hope to encourage myself and other with this post. Loose skin is proof of progress. Scares show the battles you have survived. I know under my loose skin is a 6 pack. I know how hard I have worked to naturally become a person that no one would have ever known was fat. Most of this is in my head and I don't think anyone at this point would call me a fat person at this point but I still grab my loose skin and feel that I am. Some day I may have it cut off. I think people who do that make perfect sense. Especially if you have lost far more weight than me and the skin is just hanging off your body. In my mind surgery for the removal of loose skin is different than surgery to have your fat removed or your stomach bypassed or something that would induce weight loss with out discipline. No hate on people who have done that it just wasn't my path as I my external is just a reflection of my internal and I needed to discipline my mind. So to everyone out there like me who just looked in the mirror saw your six pack that is honey coated and felt like you haven't done enough. You are awesome. Do it all for health and let the skin be what it is. A reminder of how far you have come.
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Lessons From A Reluctant Hiker1/5/2019 For some time now I have been slowly becoming what I am not. I have tried to let this process happen and not force it. I have gotten into nature and tried to give up holding onto the parts of my identity that seemed to hate happy people.
If your paid attention to this blog at all you have seen that I am becoming more and more natural in all aspects of my life while at the same time trying to learn the science behind why nature works so well with us. A person that intuitively gets into nature is not necessarily conscious of it in the way I am as I have gone through the hard process of learning to love it. At the same time the intuitively natural person can spend their time playing instead of learning. I don't see one as better than the other only different. Much like a musical person verses someone who learns music. I know a few rare people that have figured out how to be in the flow of life within themselves. Of coarse me wanting to understand them with my mind is a tell that I am not an intuitive person, at least not yet. It takes about ten years of repetition for a thing to become mastered (meaning it essentially becomes an extension of you and your nervous system) So I'm currently 37 and have a list of things that when I'm 47 I hope to not be thinking about because I'll be too busy playing. So hiking, yes I fought it for a long time. I went to the gym, I did an elliptical machine (a rat on a wheel as my friend calls it) living in one of the most beautiful places I would go indoors under blue light and go no where and it cost me money to do so. Impressive. I felt compelled to go hiking a few weeks ago and had a great time with a friend. I then decided to go by myself. These are early morning hikes. Lesson 1- The solution to darkness is not more light ( or fake light) I got up to try to watch the sun rise so it was very dark. At first I used my light on my phone but then I shut it off. After a minute or two the sky lit up with stars, the moon shined so bright and the city glowed with its own type of beauty. Letting my eyes adjust was the key. I have been thinking about that idea a lot in other aspects of life. Lesson 2- What goes up must come down There is a profound difference between going somewhere with a purpose. Climbing up, putting in effort to get there. In this case it was to collect the first rays of the sun with my eyes and then come back changed. The hike up and down the mountain was a heroes journey. Very different than an ellipse machine. The cycle of the hike was a deep teaching about life and its processes. Lesson 3- Natural light first hing in the morning is powerful My focus with health has been light and time. Morning light calibrates the brain for all the functions that the body needs to do. Guess what the lights at the gym do. they tell your body the wrong time. They ruin the chances of you being healthy even if you get skinnier. People focused on nutrition and hormones don't realize that those things are in you but your clocks are set to the wrong time so they show up when the doors are locked and then can't do the job. If the time clock is broken eventually no one shows up for work. This is why light matters far more than people know. Lesson 4- Each step is a mini problem with a solution built into it I realized how much brain power was required to navigate the hike. Each step has its own set of challenges. Why step on this rock and not the next one? But because of the climbing pace you don't have enough time to really think. Optimal is sometimes any rock that keeps you moving forward. This type of learning can't take place on a tred mill as the brain can basically shut off and go into repetition, no problems and in turn no solutions. I am learning that mini problems are the key to health in all its aspects. I could keep going but these 4 points are ideas that have been profound enough for me to try to implement them into every aspect of my life. I will continue to hike and learn and grow and change. Its taken me 37 years to set up the game, learn the rules and now I can play. I am so grateful for the people in my life that teach me so many things and have so much patience with me. My teachers, my guides, my friends. Health Blog LibraryAuthorRob Alexander is on a journey to learn not just about health but everything else. Archives
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