First of all, I have gained back 5 of the 36 pounds I had lost. I could easily blame this on the stress and not being able work out due to finals. I could also easily shift the blame to the candy corn, pumpkin pie, and eggnog I posted about on November 5th ( http://startinganewday.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/harvest-holidays/ ). But ultimately it’s nobody’s fault but my own, and it only further proves what I always tell everyone “There is no Magic Pill. There is no fool proof plan. There is no automatic success.”.
There are three parts to losing weight: “Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence”.
- Temperance is the virtue of being able to avoid the gluttonous urge to give in to your appetite for the pleasure of your senses. This means having self control when you are eating. This does not mean that you have to give anything up for good, but simply knowing when to say no.
- Fortitude is the virtue of being able to bear pain or adversity in your life. Yes exercising can be painful, especially when you are out of shape, but it will not get better if you do not keep at it. Also there will be adversities in your way like sickness, lack of time, and people telling you to give up; but you have to have the fortitude to work though it. Laying on the couch may make you feel better right now, but exercise will help you feel better in the long run.
- Prudence is the virtue of being able to able to judge which actions are appropriate at a given time. There may be left over pizza and beer in the fridge, but if you just woke up and need to leave for a long day of work soon, a nutritional shake is more appropriate. This does not mean you can not have any of the candy corn on Halloween, have to pass on the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, can not try the eggnog at the Christmas party, etc . . . It means that the next morning it is more appropriate to have something more nutritional than immediately eating all of the leftovers at once.
Also I got a tweet from RealAge that was retweeted from @KathleenShow about a post they had made on their blog. The blog is called “Prevention Not Prescriptions”. I agree with them about having it “up to here!” with people turning to prescription drugs as a quick fix for everything without even trying to do something for themselves. The way I see it is there are too many people who believe it is a fool proof plan to pop a prescription drug and automatically fix all their problems, this goes back to my saying “There is no Magic Pill, there is no fool proof plan, and there is no automatic success.”. This does not mean I do not take prescription drugs when I need them, but I do not rush to the doctor and demand them every time I think something is wrong. Also I look for non-prescription options. For example, as I read “Prevention Not Prescriptions” I noticed I had a nasal spray beside my laptop. It is a homeopathic allergy spray that contains capsaicin and nettle ; I am using it because the prescription allergy spay I had used made me groggy. There’s a slight sting to this alternative, but it does not slow me down.
The blog is also asking for feedback like:
All they ask in return is that if you have a blog entry or an article related to healthy living that you want to share; email a link to cari@prhum.com with the subject “Prevention not Prescriptions Submission”. You can do that automatically by clicking this sentence if you have an email client set up. At the time of writing this, I have not yet set up an email program on this replacement laptop, so I am going to have to copy and paste the info into my web-based e-mail service to send it. So other people can also participate, they ask that you post a link back to: http://www.thekathleenshow.com/Health/PreventionnotPrescriptions/tabid/115/Default.aspx
