An Attitude of Gratitude

At 49 years old, I have embraced the emotional and spiritual balance that gratitude brings to life even though that is not always easy on our health and fitness journey. From even the onset of puberty, I did not have the best relationship with food or my body. I used to dream that someone would create a Reeses peanut butter cup that would help you lose weight! How insane would that be ;) And further along in college I actually restricted my food along with over exercising. However, this approach did not do any favors for me. Subsequently, it was preceded with many years of back-and-forth dieting which resulted in various feelings about my body.

We are never given a guarantee as to how long we might be in what I would call a "phase of life". This could be as short as a day to several years, but the objective is to learn a lesson about yourself that brings you clarity and the tools for you to reach new heights. We often naturally go through these phases such as leaving adolescents, pregnancy, and aging. The more aware we are of what we need at any given time, the more successful we can be. Again, this does not always come easily.

Currently I am in a phase of life with a few factors merging such as hormonal changes and an aging body along with the need to heal my gut and digestion. I am also a mom who is always focused on teaching my son about health and fitness and also on being a good role model. There have been times a few months ago where I did not know if I was getting close to any answers on how to help myself feel better, which is extra challenging for me because I pride myself on teaching others based off of my experience and research in these areas. The beautiful part is, my clients never judge me, just as I do the same for them. They still believe that I have the answers, but sometimes it takes a bit to become clear to us.

At this point, I can say with true gratitude that I am grateful for my once again not so great experience with my gut health because it has led me to a direction in which I am conquering other goals that I have set out for myself such as incorporating more whole food into my diet. We often do not feel the magic of this shift before the clarity sets in so my advice to myself and to others is to just keep going. Don't wish for the issue to just resolve or go away, wish for the clarity in what to focus on and you will have many magical moments ahead of you.