Macaroni and Tomatoes

Lunch today is a flashback to a favorite childhood meal...elbow mac and canned tomatoes. Life doesn't get much better.

So I did W1D3 (week 1 day 3) of my running program last night. It was hard going back to the treadmill after Friday's outdoor run. Wednesday is looking promising for outdoor running weather, so I'm excited. I think it's interesting that outdoor running is definitely harder (due to the one course we have in town) and I look forward to it most.

I had a full-blown epiphany yesterday. I listened to a sermon over the last month or so that had a message that didn't sink in until yesterday, in the car, out of the blue. Somehow I understand now that God loves who I am today. So often, my feelings about myself are about who I will be in the future. I see that I tend to generalize that attitude to my perception of how others feel about me. And my mental shift of appreciating who I am has caused me to see that God cares for me as the person I am today. And that love also comes from my husband, my family, my friends. They love the me of today, not the projected somewhere-in-the-future me that I love. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. And knowing that others appreciate and value the me of today will help me do the same.

I'm an AFTER!

So this is it...I will be an "after." I am tired of being a "before." I look at all the magazines and feel terrible because the before picture looks just like me, and the after picture looks like something I can never attain. But I watched an episode of Oprah recently that discussed how changing the way I talk to myself can change the results I get. The show talked about how acting like I am already there (wherever I want to be) will help get me there. So today (as of this minute, forgetting even this morning), I am different.

• I am a runner. My "run" last Friday at the park was hard, but great. And only a runner could finish that. (I delete comment that could be negative...)
• I am respectful to my body. I am eating foods that my body will use as fuel. I am eating in a way that is not harmful to my body and that is preserving the body I have been given. I do not hurl insults at my body and I do not berate it for not looking the way I feel it should.
• I am honest. I do not lie to myself about what I eat. I do not (to quote Izzy from Grey's) believe that if I eat a whole tub of butter and no one sees me, the calories do not count. I am writing down what I eat, even when it is ugly, and seeing mistakes as chances to learn and grow. It's about time I started using my counseling skills on myself, right?

So that's where I'm starting. Today. I am an after.