This is about fitness and healthy eating. But, in reality, it’s about how I’m approaching life. Or, how I think I’m going to approach different areas of my new life here in Virginia.
To back up a few steps, moving to Virginia changed a lot of things in my life. I lost my parish community, my local community of friends, my lifetime of memories from growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania, my close friends, and my local extended family. I also lost access to an environment that supported my fitness habits and healthy eating. At any time, I could drive 15 minutes to run on a trail. We had 3 grocery stories and an amazing health food store within 20 minutes of our home.
My emotional environment, my physical environment, and my resource environment went away.
In addition to losing my middle son to suicide in 2020, the pandemic, and moving in 2021, I got Covid in January of this year (2022). While my illness was not bad, I kept getting colds every other week for several months. I decided to try glutathione and got my booster shot. This helped while I was training for a 1/2 marathon in the spring. But, I twisted my ankle which impacted my training. Then, I tweaked my knee lifting weights. Then, I had a serious ear infection in August which elevated my blood pressure to a level unreadable by a machine which led to taking the lowest dose possible of Losartan. In the meantime, I was training for the Virginia 10 miler and tweaked my knee, again. I ended up running the 4+ mile race instead of the full 10 miles, but shortly after that, I had another ear infection. Yes, life has been interesting.
This fall, I gained 10 lbs. I’m not happy about those 10 lbs. though I think a few pounds are the result of the new strength training program I’ve been doing. I still don’t feel happy with how I look. The food I’m eating is causing inflammation and messing up my body. Yet, I keep making choices that are not supporting my body.
To be honest, my idea of unhealthy eating is going to be different from other people’s. What I’m doing is choosing to eat more carbs in the form of vegetables, homemade cakes and cookies, and homemade jams. I think perimenopause (’cause I’m still NOT done yet – ARGH) is making my body more sensitive to carbs. I’ve always been sensitive to sugar. I would get weird, horrible headaches when eating sugar when I was younger.
Now, for the point of all of this. While listening to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, talk about good habits and bad habits on a recent episode of the Mind Pump podcast, I realized that my old environment in Pennsylvania had supported my fitness and healthy eating. I had designed parts of my environment for success while taking advantage of what happened to be in my environment.
I could look at my present environment in Virginia and feel like I could never create a supportive environment. We just started attending a new parish church, meaning we don’t know many people. We don’t really know our neighbors, and it’s harder to meet them without having the built-in advantage of young kids. The trails are at least 20 to 25 minutes away. We have one grocery store 10 minutes away which does not have an organic foods section. Costco, which is a great resource for us, is 1 1/2 hours away.
But, I’m going to choose to create an environment that supports healthy living and focuses on the emotional, physical, and resource aspects. It will take work. I have to let go of my expectations and work with what I have. I also need to identify what strategies work for me and whether or not, I’m willing and able to try new things. I also need to redefine what my support network looks like. I know I have a sister-in-law who is equally committed to healthy living. My husband started his own journey in March of this year. I may end up leaning a bit more on a Facebook group or 2 while I look for local support.
2 dogs and a house 
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