So, in this state of desperation, there is one other area of my life that I feel desperate about. It is the area of health. I have been overweight now for many years. Especially since after my first born son was born. A year after his birth, I was diagnosed with High Blood Pressure which I have been taking medications for now for over 5 years. Because of my weight, I have painful knees and it gets worse when I go up and down the stairs (I recently moved to an upstairs apartment and my knees have been killing me.)
So, I was feeling quite desperate to lose weight. Since I know my weight is part of the reasons I struggle with HBP and joint pain, I have tried over the years to lose weight and it just doesn’t seem to work. As you can imagine, painful knees and swollen ankles make it difficult to do much walking or jogging. Last December, like many of us do, I was thinking about New Year’s resolutions and losing weight was one of them. Please note: I stopped writing down New Year’s resolutions long time ago because I never seemed to ever reach those goals. So, this was just in my mind. I did not write it down. But I really wanted to work on losing weight. I was disappointed because where I moved to, there wasn’t anywhere conducive to walk.
I felt very desperate. I felt helpless and hopeless about ever reaching the goal of losing weight. Just for your information, I weigh 94 kgs while my BMI tells me my ideal weight should be 58 kgs. So, I would need to lose close to 40 kgs to be at my healthy weight.
So, I was feeling quite desperate. Then about three weeks ago, I was introduced to a lady by a friend who had quite an interesting story. Again, I am a skeptic first and foremost. But because of desperation, I have decided I need to change my way of thinking. So, I went to her training with my hands folded, in my mind, if you get what I mean. I had no expectations and no real emotions towards what she was going to share. She shared nothing I had not heard about before. But she also shared a slogan that stayed with me. “My Health, My responsibility.”
So, in this desperate mood, I decided, “Oh what the heck, I will try this. What have I got to lose?” I thought to myself, I might actually lose some of this weight just trying some of the ideas she was sharing. And I am talking about raw juicing diet. For whatever reason, I felt very optimistic by the end of her presentation. First of all, she did not ask me to give up anything. She just asked me to improve my immune system by replacing some of my cooked foods with raw juiced fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and herbs.
My brain, unlike other times, did not “rebel” against her teaching. I found myself owning it and wanting to do it. Like most of us do about any compelling idea, I googled juicing and learned quite a bit, both pros and cons. At the end of the day, I decided to try it. Each of the success stories I read were again born out of a desperate moment.
And therefore, as we speak, desperation led me to start juicing and I replaced my breakfast and dinner with juices while I eat a meal at lunch time. Of course my body has been going through some serious withdrawal especially from not eating too much carbohydrates like I used to. So, I am taking it a day at a time. I also want a program that is sustainable. So, I am working on identifying what I can do for the long haul rather than a few months of dieting and then back to the old thing. I am still working on it and so far, so good. We will see what it will yield.
Again, desperate times call for desperate measures. Use that energy to steer you to reach the goals you’ve always wanted to accomplish. Do not allow that desperate feeling to bog you down, let it be a stepping stone to what you could achieve. It’s an opportunity waiting for you to seize.
