Do the Least Amount of Harm Every Day

Do the Least Amount of Harm Every Day

My sister was a nurse for 26 years and worked for the most part with elderly patients.  She is a saint in my eyes.  I can call her any time I need help and she is a great listener, never judging me and seldom telling me what I should do unless I ask her.   My struggle with weight has been a life long battle ever since I was in the fourth grade.  After spending a few years with a caring loving Christian therapist, I know all the reasons why I eat.  I know them, and yet there are days when I still eat, and eat, and eat.  Yesterday was one of those days.  I made the mistake of looking at some old pictures of me and comparing myself to what I look like today. 

When I lamented to my sister how I felt, she said something that really made sense.  “Could you go through each day doing the least possible harm to your body as possible?” she asked.  I had to give this some serious thought.  Even though it would never be perfect, could my goal for each day be to do the least possible harm to my body?  That was a possibility. 

Today is a new day and that thought is still with me.  For me, each day starts with a cup of hot tea.  Most of the time I get in my twenty minutes of meditation on my back patio.  The meditation is going better and I prefer doing it outside.  It still takes me about ten minutes to really get centered and concentrate, but I am improving.  The barking dog or the airplane overhead does not distract me like it once did.  Since carbs seem to trigger more hunger in me, I am trying for today to not eat as much of them and instead fill up more on protein when hunger strikes.   They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  If this is true, then there are days when my road is a 6 lane freeway.  I get up each day with the very best of intentions, which many times do not get accomplished.  But just for this day, I am going to do the least amount of harm to my body by eating better than I did yesterday.  I will go to my Zumba class tomorrow and try not to run into the person next to me as I go to the right when the rest of the class is going to the left.  But I will tell you more about this adventure in my next blog.