Shortcuts
For a long time, since I'm 27 actually, I've been noticing a pretty steady upward creep in my weight (barring the births of my kids) and a pretty steady decline in my metabolism.
I never like to follow trends. When everyone was reading Harry Potter, I waited like two years before checking it out. When everyone was doing "Atkins/low carb" I rolled my eyes. It bugs me that on the NYT best-seller list, there is amost always a dieting book.
It also really irritates me to think of cutting an entire food group out of my diet. Didn't G-d create so many different kinds of foods for us to enjoy? On the first day, He created doughnuts. On the second day He created Diet Coke. On the third day, ravioli. Right?
Yet it has finally dawned on me that there are no shortcuts to reclaiming my health and avoiding the steady drift into the wrong direction. Ergo, I will have to cut certain foods out of my diet most of the time. Namely, white sugar and white flour. Why? These are the foods that, when I consume them, I always eat more than intended, and they don't give my body fullness or nutrients. I've been trying this for a few weeks now, and I must say: I like it.
There's an initial stage where it's so difficult to say I'm just not having cookies and cakes now. Ice cream. Challah. Pizza (unless whole wheat). But there really are no shortcuts.
I remember when a good friend of mine lost a lot of weight awhile ago and I asked her "wow, how did you do it??" She said: Eat less. Move more.
There are no shortcuts.
Anything valuable that we achieve in life is the same. Long-term loving committed relationships, the greatest marker of happy people, don't come by easily or quickly. It takes years made of months made of days made of moments of prioritizing the relationship above other things. No shortcuts.
What do you want to achieve?
Shabbat Shalom,
Ruchi
