This week has been a great opportunity to explore the use of Imagery as a motivatIonal tool.  My runs have been 2.5 miles each on average, but they have been just about every day for six days a week.  The accumulation of that work starts to feel heavy….and I found I needed something to carry me through it.

My new focus has been to watch my body, rather than the scale.  I’ve noticed through this weight loss journey that I go through periods where the scale does not move, but my body shape definitely does.  I don’t do any formal measuring of my body.  I typically know by the fit of my clothes, especially the dresses I wear to work.   One week my dress will feel snug around my hips or my arms, and voila, the next week, it’s fitting better, and in no time at all…the darn thing is roomy!  The first time this happened when the scale wasn’t moving, I have to admit, it confused me, and frustrated me.  I wanted the pounds OFF!  Since then, I’ve learned to accept it, to enjoy it, even to look forward to it.

So this week, the scale doesn’t seem to be moving.  But my body is!  I feel I can see a definition forming around my hips.  I suffer, like most women who have had kids, from the dreadful belly pooch.  But this week, I’m beginning to see my belly smoothing out, my hip bones emerging.  Yea, I have bones in there!!!!  I’ve only seen them on skeletons in biology lab in high school and in magazines!  But they are in there, and I want ’em!

So, all this week, when I didn’t want to get up early and run, or when it was cold outside and I didn’t want to go for the run…..I reminded myself that I have a mission.  I laced up those pumped-up kicks, hit the treadmill or the road, “to run my belly off.”

That image in the back of my mind made the running feel important, and satisfying, and it kept me going.  And even though I still have lots of soft spots that need work…..when I look in the mirror before my shower, the parts I’m noticing now are the leaner spots, the newly emerging body that lives underneath.   THAT is a really nice new perspective, and I feel like I’ve turned a corner in terms of liking myself more.   Kindness works!  So does Imagery.

So my message for today is to encourage you to be brave enough to Imagine the new you, and then buckle down and do ONE new thing today to start making it happen.  It all adds up!

Ciao for now……Diane