Most of my blog posts, both here and over at my old blog, have focused on fasting and ketogenic eating. This time I’d like to talk about another aspect of healthy living: movement!
When I first embarked on this process of changing my lifestyle and claiming my health, I understood that it was going to be, if my efforts worked, life-changing. What I didn’t know then was exactly how life-changing it would be!
Early on in that process, I came across a photo of this sculpture (edited to add, courtesy of Michael McKay): by Gabriel D’Orazio:
It’s been criticized here and there, but for me it hit home in a very poignant way. For years, what I saw on the outside didn’t match my inner view of myself at all. I’ve always been a hard worker, intelligent, driven, highly competent, and I’ve also always been rather active. I’ve been a regular walker and semi-regular lap swimmer. I’ve played various sports, even voluntarily (lol) and enjoyed it.
Here’s the secret no one ever tells you when you’re overweight: it’s so much easier to be active when you’re not. It’s easy for a fit person to tell someone heavy to “just” take the stairs or walk more. I always did – but I’m constantly amazed to find not only how much easier it it now, but how much more I enjoy it – and I always did enjoy being active!
The sculpture above struck me because it felt very much like the thing I’d always yearned to be able to do: free myself from a body that didn’t always serve me the way I wished it would, in favour of revealing what I felt was a truer form of my physical self. Interestingly, beyond just having more physical energy now – particularly when I’m fasting! – I also find that this same energy has spread into enthusiasm for other, non-physical arenas of life. I have no idea how or why, but I like it. I find myself feeling more open-minded about trying new things, more gung-ho about everything from my work to areas of my personal life. And when it comes to fitness, I barely recognize myself.
In the past six weeks, I’ve suddenly, overnight, become a gym person?? It’s bizarre, truly. There’s a small gym in my building which I’m frequently the only person using (whoo!), so I now use it regularly, almost daily, either for cardio or weight training. I managed to catch the last good day for cross-country skiing the weekend before last, and find myself looking for active things to do outside that are possible in our current, transitional winter-to-spring mess. I want to get a bike! And maybe some rollerblades! (Who AM I?!)
I’ve spent a lot of time in the past year and two months feeling so much more awake and more alive than I ever felt before. I attribute this very much to the constant fog that people typically recognize as having come from a diet of too much sugar/carbs. Now that I’m out of the fog, I feel like I’ve missed out on a lot, just due to having been too low energy, lethargic, and depressed (sugar is a known depressant). What might I have felt more enthusiastic about tackling, had I only had the energy or the enthusiasm for it?
Either way, I’m making up for lost time now! I feel like I’m breaking free at last, beginning to not only resemble the person I always saw myself as on the inside, but also the one I always wished I felt like on the outside. It’s pretty amazing!
The Fasting Life 