BODY: InfoPharmacy Nutrition Makeover Week 13

As I sit here and munch on veggie shepherd’s pie with a side of Japanese-style spinach, I am reflecting on what three months, which is the halfway point, of my nutrition makeover has accomplished. In the past 12 weeks I have:

• Lost eight to 10 pounds (depends when I weigh myself)
• Clearer skin and shinier hair
• Improved energy level
• Better sleep (eight hours a night)
• Strong digestive system and consistent elimination

And that is just the physical part.

As I was waiting for the bus this morning in the 20-degree weather, I also contemplated my ‘Monday morning blues’. I was trying, through sheer habit, to feel sorry for myself (work, Monday, cold, holidays), and then I realized that I actually didn’t feel that bad. In fact, I felt good.

For many years, I walked around feeling more or less bad all the time. It would wax and wane, but my default setting was always ‘slightly cloudy with chance of rain’. It was as if I didn’t know how to be any other temperature. I just didn’t know how to be happy and my lifestyle that included generous amounts of booze and cigarettes wasn’t really helping.

But that started changing two years ago as I put down those bad habits and replaced them with more positive ones.

I put down drinking, and took up meditation.

I put down smoking, and I took up cooking.

I put down hating my body, and I took up a regular yoga practice.

I put down hating my alarm clock, and I took up the practice of making a short gratitude list first thing in the morning.

On any given day, it’s hard to judge the progress and cumulative effect of these efforts. Some days it is still a rainstorm. But more and more it’s not. And having put down the drink or more than 14 months, the nicotine for more than six, and embarked on a new way of eating for the past three, I can say there is a cumulative effect: I feel, in every way, stronger, more resilient, quicker and happier.

I have been receiving compliments such as “you look great” and “you seem very happy”. It is wonderful to hear things like that because I know what it feels like to not hear affirmation; to be stuck in the self-knowledge that you’re really just not doing that great or looking good. That you’re stuck in the depths of a dependent relationship with alcohol, cigarettes, ice cream, men, women or whatever.

However, I remind myself daily that while compliments feel good, the true meaning of this work is for me alone. I am really looking forward to the next three months of this makeover and deepening that self-knowledge.