If you walked into a karate dojo today, it would be pretty fair to say that you wouldn’t be proficient the following week. If you joined ballet or dance today, you wouldn’t be able to stand on point or start competing the following week, either. Important things take time and this is especially important as it relates to one’s health.
People these days are all about the right here, right now. Immediate gratification is often the expectation, and we live in a society where everyone is plugged in and always looking for something that will help them melt fat, slim down or build muscle. But like endeavour, the results won’t appear quickly. And even when do appear, it’s important to keep at it.
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of getting home after a long day and flopping down on the couch with a cold drink and binge-watching something on television. It’s easy, right? Humans as a whole will usually prefer to take the path of least resistance, much like the course of a river. But health and fitness REQUIRES that you step off the path of least resistance and persevere on the harsher path.
Recently, I started to dislike the way I looked. This can be attributed to a number of things, including indulging in a less-than-favourable diet, consuming beer and alcohol and allowing my fitness trends to slide off the rails, where I would go full weeks without working out. It’s okay to take the occasional break, but not when it’s to the detriment of your overall health and fitness. And not least of all, is the constant adjustment to my system from exercising consistently to being more sedentary and vice versa…. It plays hell on the blood sugars!
My point is, I took a few very simple steps to start doing something to slim down a bit. I don’t think I need to explain that as I get older, weight becomes harder to shed and Diabetes control becomes more important. But all I’ve done is chit back on my carbohydrate intake and alcohol consumption, increase my intake of fluids and have started working a few small fitness challenges. It’s taken a while, but I’ve managed to shed almost ten pounds over the past couple of months, the results of which I’m starting to see (in small doses).
A pair of pants I purchased four months ago that fit decently are now loose enough that the waist band folds over when I cinch my belt. A golf shirt that six months ago pretty much drew the eye directly to my gut now fits comfortably and I’m wearing it right now, as I type. It’s small difference that come from persevering and not giving up. There will always be days when the couch is calling, but if you push through and get that workout in to maintain your consistency, you’ll eventually start to see the difference. Slow and steady wins the race on this one…☯️
The Blogging Buddhist 
All of my truly successful weight loss outings have been along the exact same lines; small changes stuck to and increased over time.
People wanting a magic pill though… No kidding. Some of those supplements and such even work. IF you make healthy changes, they’ll speed the work along a little bit.
BTW, Oprah beat you to publicizing this whole concept ages ago. 😀 Did you ever see when she was on her “eat less, move more” campaign? She slowly took off alot of weight and was doing her best to encourage her audience to do the same using the tactics you advocate here.
What sticks with me more, to this very day, is the way her audience abandoned her for it. I caught part of the special where she had a talk with her studio audience about it all. They all said that they didn’t feel she could relate to them anymore because she had lost weight. I could tell she was crushed. She put back on the weight in short order too.
That was a real eye opener about how selfish and lazy the average person can be.
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I haven’t watched/seen Oprah in years. Of course, I also don’t have cable television, so that may be the reason. I do remember that she lost quite a bit of weight years ago, but I had never heard about the abandonment issue from her audience. I think that’s a little sad. That’s like getting angry at someone who recovered from a cold while you’re still ill…. I think your last sentence hits the nail on the head.
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