Lock It Up

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato (427-347 BC)

I'm not talking about stopping at the stop sign or breaking into the neighbour's house, I'm talking about personal laws. Whether we know it or not, we all have personal laws that we either follow or we break. If we're not consciously aware of what they are, chances are we break them. No the cake police won't come lock me up if I take a second piece, but I have a personal law that says I eat healthy, so by eating cake I condemn myself to Have-Not Prison. Perhaps you've been there also? It's where you go when you dream of a better life and only get more of the same and worse. Yeah, we've all been there.

What I'm coming round to from yesterday and again today is that I need to be less lenient on myself. I need to hold myself accountable, set personal laws and not break them, if I ever hope to be that person I want to be.

“Life’s biggest changes happen in a second.”

You don't stop for the stop sign, smash into another car and kill three people, one of them a child. In one second your life changed forever and you became a killer. Nothing will ever be the same again, and three people's lives have ended abruptly because you broke the law. And you know, that's the way it is with everything--diet, exercise, procrastination. The second you decide it's ok just this one time to skip the workout or put off that task until later or eat the fried chicken, you've broken your personal law and become nothing better than a criminal. It might seem extreme, but what I'm really talking about is integrity. I mean if you can't keep your word to yourself, if you can't trust yourself, then how can you possibly expect anyone else to take your word and trust you? And if my personal rule says, "I eat healthy." How is it ever right to eat a piece of cake? I mean it's the same as smoking. My personal rule is that I am a non-smoker, although I smoked for many many years. And I loved smoking! I mean nobody loved smoking more than me. So making a rule that I am a non-smoker was not easy for me. I gave up immense pleasure because I knew cigarettes were bad for me and I was working on another personal rule--I am a healthy person. So I gave up cigarettes five plus years ago and there isn't a week that goes by that I am not aware of cigarettes and that they don't call to me. Sometimes it's really hard not to give in and have just one puff. But I am a non-smoker and I am a healthy person, so there can be no puffs, ever, it's against the laws of Kellie. So, why should cake or fried chicken be any different? How can I justify bending the rules for them? I mean there is absolutely nothing nutritional about a piece of cake. Nada! It's practically poison.

I watched Ross Matthews talky blog on Tuesday. I love his blog! Ross is otherwise known as Ross the Intern from the Tonight Show. He used to be a big boy but last year he went on Celebrity Fit Club and got healthy and trim. In Tuesday's talky blog he gets more emotional, upset and angry than I've ever seen him in the many months of watching everyday. Why is he so angry? It's been a year since Celebrity Fit Club and the day he said goodbye to one of his best friends, Pizza. He dreams of pizza. He craves pizza. He explains which ones are his favourites. And yes, he understands that having one piece of pizza won't make him fat again. And he's not saying that he won't ever have a slice, maybe one day he will, but right now, he's sticking to his personal rule and he's worked too hard and he's having too much success to bend the rules and have pizza. Instead he opts to make a healthier pizza at home using whole grain tortillas, a touch of low-fat cheese, some favourite veggies, etc. He asks his readers to post their healthy pizza recipes and ideas in order to help him out. This talky blog post of his spoke to me on a level unlike anything else. Something clicked. The boy was tearing up talking about pizza! He longs for it the way I long for a long slow drag off a cigarette on a cool fall day. But I don't give in and take the drag. And Ross doesn't give in and eat the pizza.

In the past year or so I've been slowly coming round to the idea that undoing the damage I've done to my body my whole life in order to finally emerge the healthy person I want to be is damn hard work. And I'm not just talking physical health here, I'm talking the whole spectrum, emotional and mental, etc. I want to make advances in my career. I have goals and dreams I want to accomplish. I want to kick procrastination to the curb once and for all. But it all takes time. It takes effort. It takes me making conscious healthy decisions 100% of the time.

I say I've been slowly coming around to the idea that it's hard because honestly I've still been invested in finding shortcuts. I've still been looking for ways to have my cake and eat it too . . . literally! I've wanted to find a way to get rid of this excess weight without exercise. I've wanted to be able to get healthy and still have french fries with gravy or drumstick squares. I've been learning tons of stuff about proper nutrition and counting calories and burning calories and so on, but I've been holding out, looking for some quick fix. I need to make the rules, write them down so there can be no doubt and then read them everyday to remind myself. Then I need to stop being a person without integrity and start following my own damn rules. I mean if I'm not going to obey my own laws, what's keeping me from one day getting behind the wheel of a car and killing three people? Or going next door and robbing the girl? Why follow those laws? What's to stop me from giving in to any urge I have when I have it no matter if it's legal or not? Why should my life outside of my home be any different than the one I'm living in it? If I'm a liar and a cheat at home . . .

I need to sit down and really think about what I will accept of myself, and also what I will accept of others. It's a good exercise. I think it'll help.

Mood: very well, thank you
Drinking: coffee, black
Listening To: grumble, grumble, grumble this computer is a growler, the first couple of days i kept thinking i was hearing thunder in the distance
Hair: pulled back in a pony