by katie veltri kjvelch@aol.com
Getting fit is a lifestyle change, but what if you’re lifestyle change depended on your emotional state? Do you let your emotions guide how you treat your body? Most people do. Think about it, if you’re feeling sad or blue, what do you do? Would you really want to work out or chomp down a handful of carrots?
How we feel has so much to do with how we live. Whether it is on a conscious level or not, we all, to some degree or another, find solace in acting out how we feel towards our body because it is the best and easiest tool to do it with. It’s not just a one-way street. This means it’s not just when you exercise and eat healthy that your emotional state improves, it’s the other way around, too. Your emotional state has the power to either kick you into high gear to make a change and persevere, or drive you to justify how you feel with eating bad foods and taking a nap instead of a jog.
The point, is you have the power to decide whether to persevere or plummet. Getting in shape has much to do with the choices that you make depending upon your emotional state. Here is a quote from a man who has his own story and some great advice on the subject:
“People mistakenly think happiness is where you sit and vegetate under a lotus tree,” says Vitale, 52, an author and hypno-therapist in Texas. “The truth is happy people tend to take more actions in the direction of their goals.”
Vitale attained his physical fitness by focusing on what he wanted, not on what he didn’t want. One can do this by following a weight-loss program that places more emphasis on happiness than dieting.
“Unhappy people tend to sit in front of the television and overeat and do nothing but complain,” he said. “Even if they are feeling frustrated, sad, or angry, they tend to bottle their energy and do little to nothing with it. As a result, they get fat.”
It’s a vicious cycle, one that Vitale knows all too well. Through his own weight-loss program, he focuses on tackling underlying issues and demons to attain a more blissful state, which in turn allows one to lose weight and attain physical fitness.
Inspiration comes from letting stories like these sink in. Vitale has made the choice to perceive getting fit as an emotional wake up call. You can use that aggression, frustration, fear, angst, pain, depression, or stress to push through to a new world. You can do this by becoming in tune with these emotions and molding them into something better, because these feelings are something worth evaluating. These feelings are there for a reason. Often I have felt a euphoric bliss when running, feeling that I can get past these obstacles and emotional roadblocks if I just keep going. There are moments when we all want to crawl into a black hole and wait until someone else pulls us out. The light that we’re searching for, though, is not outside of us. It’s inside. It’s in you.
Posture up. When you’re walking, take notice of you how hold yourself. You can strengthen and tone your abdominals by simply walking with correct posture. To do this: relax your shoulders down away from your ears, rolling them back a couple of times, then, tilt your pelvis in and out a few times until you find a neutral position, then allow your spine to lengthen by contracting your stomach muscles and shoulders to relax down even more. When you inhale, imagine that you are expanding your rib cage when you exhale, imagine that you are pulling your belly button in towards your spine.
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