Me?!?!?... EXERCISING?!?!?!?.... hahahahaha

so the last time i blogged i was just starting the daniel fast... it was a tremendous success... i completed 21 days of vegan living... then... lol... i began eating regularly again... i'm now so far from vegan living it isn't even funny... but it hasn't been all for naught... i'm learning about me continuously... so for the last 2 and a half months i've been devising a plan for myself... i have such great will power... i can do whatever i set my mind to for a defined period of time... i've done a 10 day master cleanse where all i lived on for 10 days was organic lemonade with cayenne pepper in it... i just completed the 21 day daniel fast... i've been 100% raw for 30 days... it's not about IF i can do something, it's about if i can incorporate something and allow it to become a part of my lifestyle by developing a habit instead of white knuckling it and jumping right in... so over the last couple of months i've decided that if all the stars were aligned, if everything in my world were perfect, i'd be going to bed at a reasonable hour, sleeping at least 7 or 8 hours a night, spending time meditating on God and His goodness, studying my Bible, eating healthy meals regularly throughout the day, consuming my superior nutrition twice daily, exercising at least six times a week, growing my business, volunteering regularly and living healthy and free... that's what would happen if all my stars were aligned... lol... well, i somehow seem to be able to do only one or two of those things at the same time... but i've never had it all together... not even for ONE DAY... so i've devised a plan for myself... i'm going to try to create an environment and a plan that will allow me to experience what having all of that feels like... my date for achieving at least ONE DAY of alignment of all the key factors in my life is December 24, 2011... when i thought of this it was a little over 6 months away... so what i've been doing is making small, easy to achieve changes... after the daniel diet, i began to feel like i no longer had any excuse not to exercise... it used to be the back pain and the ankle pain and the knee pain that prevented me from exercising, but with good nutrition, my pain is significantly reduced and it is so much better that i can function without meds and i can walk and i can stand up straight :) ... i'm truly blessed... i began to talk to myself and tell myself that being able to exercise is a privilege and i should be ecstatic to be able to do it pain free... so that's been the self speak for the last couple of months... i also know that success doesn't necessarily require HARD work... what is required is that i take CONSISTENT, DELIBERATE, INTENTIONAL ACTION... so, how am i doing this... well... two and a half months ago i asked myself to simply begin a deliberate, consistent and intentional exercise program... i asked myself to do something that seemed silly, but guaranteed that i would succeed... failure would only come if i chose NOT to take action... i asked myself to do intentional exercise for FIVE MINUTES just 3 times a week... lol... really??... five minutes???... lol... yep... that's all i asked of me... and those first five minutes were the hardest five minutes of exercise that i can remember... i was on the stationary bike pedaling and sweating profusely wondering how long i'd been pedaling when the display flashed to the elapsed time and said "30 seconds"... lol... it was CRAZY... i had to psych myself out just to get all the way through... five minutes is NOTHING... but it was a lot for me in the condition that i was... i did that for a couple of weeks... then worked up to 10 minutes 3 times a week, then 15 minutes 3 times a week and did that for about a month... i'm talking baby steps... the week of july 4th there was a setback because family came to visit and we all went to visit more family and a whole lot of eating went on and i didn't exercise for a week, but july 10th i began my next phase which has been exercising SIX days a week for AT LEAST 15 minutes (which means that some days i exercise for longer periods of time... today was 30 minutes)... my endurance has picked up so much in the last two months that i now find myself having to kick it up a notch in order to start sweating... :) ... i'm doing stationary cycling, treadmill walking, and i have some favorite dvd exercise programs that i'm using that have varying levels of intensity and workouts that are challenging... i'm exercising and actually loving how i'm feeling... i'm also beginning to love the exercise... it is as essential to me as brushing my teeth daily... it's a MUST DO... so now that the exercise layer and "habit" has a solid foundation, my next layer is bedtime... i'm a night owl and so much of my poor eating habits are wrapped up in the fact that i stay up too late... who wouldn't be hungry 6 or 7 hours after dinner time if they were still up?... it's just crazy to say "nothing after dinner" and then stay up and remain active for 7 more hours and expect NOT to be starving... so i figure if i go to bed 3 or 4 hours after my last meal, i should be able to avoid some of the bad late night eating and kill two birds with one stone... lol... anyway, i've written a book today... this is way too long for anyone to want to read, but i guess this is what happens when i don't get on here too often... gonna set my calendar on my blackberry to remind me to post more regularly... one day, perhaps i'll get back to the raw food, which is why i began this blog... but for right now, i think it's more about raw emotions and my quest for health and real freedom...