Fitness From the Inside-Out

If you are unhealthy or overweight I suggest you look at your head. Chances are, there are negative, heavy old thoughts stuck right between your ears, and this is where your illness begins. Before starting yet another fad diet (What now? Cut out all proteins and eat only carbs?) or exercise regimes doomed to failure why not begin at the beginning. Heres my promise to you: if you attend to your inside (your mind, your thoughts, and your spirit) the outside will take care of itself. One more time: take care of the inside and the outside will, automatically as a matter of course, become healthy and strong.

Weve all heard how stress can increase the risk of heart attack, affect cholesterol, blood pressure, and lower the immune system. Recent studies have also confirmed that if youre under stress, digestion is the last thing your body attends to. The body, when churning on anxiety, fear, anger, jealousy (or any other negative emotion) is busy pumping adrenaline through your system to maintain the fight or flight response that comes with threatening situations and feelings. Its worried about getting blood pushed to all organs and extremities, and keeping your respiratory rate decent. Digestion of food becomes a low priority and so, no matter how healthily you eat, if you live on negative emotions, that food just isnt going to be well processed. In many scenarios, folks suffer gut reactions to stress chronic indigestion, acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome and other illnesses that just cause the belly to ache with misery.

Though exercise nearly always ameliorates stress and illness, many people resent doing it or claim never to have the time. If you start an exercise program ticked off at the very idea of exercise well, youre just churning bad stuff around inside yourself. You may manage to get fit but you still wont look healthy. Weve all seen folks like that lean, muscular, and miserable. They may be fit but theres no light shining and the body just cant sustain that charade for very long.

So heres how Id suggest you start a change in your lifestyle that will lead to health: focus on your own happiness. What makes your heart sing (and why arent you doing that?) What are the major causes of stress outside yourself, and what are your internal responses to those people or situations? You may not be able to control what goes on in your office or even your home but you can certainly have completely control over how you choose to see things and react or respond to them. Maybe you cant quit the job you loathe but you are creative enough to find another way to look at it.

Sometimes, however, we become so used to unhappiness that we dont want to change. We like our anger, gossiping, griping, and complaining. It fuels some kind of fire and it feels good, for the moment anyway. If you truly want to get healthy I have some really bad and scary news: you have to get happy first. You have to. So its one thing to identify the causes of stress in your life. Its a whole other bag of potatoes to try to really change your perspective about them.

Before you sign up for a gym membership, or go to the doctor for more drugs, or decide the whole family is going vegetarian, do this one simple exercise: be aware of every negative thought in your head, just for one day, from the moment you wake up until you fall asleep. Ideally, you should write each one down. Your journal might look like this:

1. I slept lousy last night

2. Its always so hot in this room because of you-know-who

3. My back is killing me. It never lets up.

4. These damn kids.

5. Look at that headline. What a world.

6. These car payments are too high

7. I hate this traffic!

Your eyes have been open less than an hour and the litany of misery is already long indeed. Can you imagine how many times a day you think rotten thoughts? Eventually, your insides rot your outsides. Its that simple, and that easy to reverse. Once you are aware of how your mind is endlessly negative, just stop doing it. Breathe. Think. Is there another way to see this? What can I be grateful for? Does he/she act that way because of fear? I love my kids. This car sure has some character. I can simplify my life. And so on.

Then do this same exercise focusing on your self, instead of what makes you miserable externally. Dig real deeply here for all kinds of old, obsolete, and negative thinking. No matter how old you are, I guarantee you are carrying around some very dark perceptions from your childhood. Time to clean out the basement, folks, and find out why youve never allowed happiness to flood into you like a sunrise. Heres what you might find in the category of Old Negative Destructive Beliefs:

1. The idea of being really happy is scary. Then what?

2. My mother/father was never happy.

3. I dont deserve abundance, happiness, or joy.

4. Life is all about suffering.

5. Its too late for me to get healthy.

6. Sickness is just the way it is.

7. No one ever gets really happy here anyway.

The list of negative ideas that lie just below the surface of our minds is endless. Therefore, on a daily basis youre churning negativity not only about whats happening outside yourself, but about what you deserve, fear, or want from the bottom of your own heart. In this scenario, getting and staying healthy is just impossible. The good news is that the opposite is also just as true: when you clean out the dark, oppressive, negative thinking on the inside, find a different perspective about what goes on around you well, youre not going to be getting sick. More than that, youre going to start feeling better, wanting to be healthy. Youll have the energy and desire to exercise and fill your body with good fuel. One thing leads to the other, folks. When you take good care of your spirit, the body will follow as a matter of course.

One word of caution: getting happy is hard work, because everything around you will fight that impulse. We are bred to believe in suffering, deprivation and lack. Its really hard to start looking at our negative way of thinking, and changing that. Some new age authors would have you believe it only takes 40 days of writing down little affirmations. Actually, the process of divesting yourself of old baggage is a tough one, but its the only way to go. You need to have the perseverance and discipline of an Olympic athlete. Youll have to turn off the TV, stop the shopping, drinking, sex, do-gooding, or whatever other habit youve developed to distract you from this work. But once undertaken, theres no turning back, and the path leads to joy.

So tell your friends and family youre embarking on the only exercise program that really works, works well and for good: fitness from the inside out. They might scoff, Ill tell you, or make great fun of you (because misery loves company) but solider on because your happiness is all there really is. We are schooled in the wrong-headed notion that the pursuit of our own happiness is selfish when in fact its the most you can personally do to contribute to the overall welfare of the folks around you, your community, and the world. So, dont be afraid to be selfish.
To change your body, change your mind. Its that simple and that difficult. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. Im in your corner, because were all in this together. And theres nothing better than seeing the bright shining light of a truly happy person. Good luck

Phyllis Coletta is an author, recovering attorney, former high school teacher turned cowgirl. With her partner Bob McConnell she owns and operates KB Mountain Adventures, where they bring people out into the wilderness to have fun. You can contact Phyllis through http://www.kbmountainadventures.com

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