Quotable - destination happiness

"I used to believe that there was a destination happiness. With the right person - with the right job - finishing the next project - all those things would bring me permanent happiness. They did bring me many moments of happiness but now I know that life is one day at a time and you just have to work with what is in front of you. Don't visit the past too often or imagine a fantasy future just be where you are now." Source

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Quotable - We Have a Choice

We Have a Choice

When someone harms us, they create the cause of their own suffering. They do this by strengthening habits that imprison them in a cycle of pain and confusion. It’s not that we are responsible for what someone else does, and certainly not that we should feel guilty. But when they harm us, we unintentionally become the means of their undoing. Had they looked on us with loving-kindness, however, we’d be the cause of their gathering virtue. 

What I find helpful in this teaching is that what’s true for them is also true for me. The way I regard those who hurt me today will affect how I experience the world in the future. In any encounter, we have a choice: we can strengthen our resentment or our understanding and empathy. We can widen the gap between ourselves and others or lessen it.   

--  Pema Chödrön

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daily dose

"You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is."

-- Ellen Degeneres

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it's never too late

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real food isn't bad

"Real food isn’t bad. If it came from the earth and hasn’t been tampered with by hormones and tons of chemicals and artificial everything, it’s likely pretty good nourishment. Eat it in moderation. Eat a variety of it. Prepare it with care. Make your plate pretty. Share it with people you love. Put down your fork between bites and make conversation as you break bread. Wash it down with a glass of wine and maybe a little something sweet. Push away from the table satisfied, but not stuffed."

~ Selene Yeager (Fit Chick)

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eyes wide open

"We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...
not looking for flaws, but for potential." 

 ~ Ellen Goodman

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what she said

"I’m more interested in my experience of life now, rather than how other people experience me – appearance-wise, at least. And an exhilarating, rich and full life experience is largely dependent on feeling strong and well."

 - Kim Brittingham, guest post at MizFit

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Quotable - Why I Don't Diet

"Diet companies convince women (and men, to a slightly lesser extent) that skinny means healthy, that weight loss is the key to happiness, and that being even slightly overweight is shameful. Healthy, beautiful humans come in all shapes and sizes, but the diet industry will never acknowledge that fact."
 - Why I Don't Diet, Sally McGraw

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Quotable

Life is like riding a bicycle. You don't fall off unless you plan to stop peddling.

 -- Claude Pepper

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quotable

"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Quotable - snuck up on me

"I didn't decide to become anorexic. It snuck up on me disguised as a healthy diet, a professional attitude....

I finally understood that by being on a perpetual diet, I had practiced a "disordered" form of eating my whole life. I restricted when I was hungry and in need of nutrition and binged when I was so grotesquely full I couldn't be comfortable in any position but laying down. Diets that tell people what to eat or when to eat are the practices in between....Obsessing about what and when to eat is not normal, natural, and orderly. Thinking about food to the point of obsession and ignoring your body's signals is a disorder."

~ Portia de Rossi from her memoir Unbearable Lightness

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Quotable - debating calories

"And now we live in a world in which the calorie is not a measurement of heat or energy, but of willpower and integrity. We are told implicitly and explicitly that calories equal poison and we should limit them at every opportunity. A quick stroll through the grocery store turns up low-cal versions of nearly everything, from mashed potatoes to oatmeal to dressing to cookies. What happened to eating food in it’s natural form, including all of the energy it was intended to offer? (and all of the taste it was intended to have?"

~ Ashley Solomon, The Great Calorie Debate

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Quotable

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
-- Carl Rogers

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a new year - a new start

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Quotable - pure joy

Cycling. I loved it as a child and I love it even more as an adult. By my late thirties, pursuing an academic career, I was getting out of shape and knew I had to start exercising. So I asked myself what was the physical activity I liked most as a kid. I was a visiting professor at Harvard's Kennedy School and I went over to a great bike shop, Belmont Wheelworks and bought a road bike. I lost 40 pounds in a couple of months, because I was having so much fun. Cycling still gives me the same feeling of pure joy I had as a boy. It's pure happiness.

~ Robert Florida, interview with Gretchen Rubin

I'm getting close to reaching a milestone with my cycling.

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Fit at 50? It don't come easy

What can women expect from their bodies after 50?
I believe a woman can get a fit, toned and sexy body at 50, but she has to work out for it. Fight gravity all the way. Exercise is a must. Especially muscle-conditioning moves. To keep up your muscle tone and firm up, work out at least three times a week with weights, your own body weight, Pilates or boot-camp-type exercises that focus on strength.

Of course, cardio is so important too, as well as stretching for flexibility.

~ Denise Austin, (52) "...I don't ever think of a perfect body. I think of a healthy body."

It Don't Come Easy
(just read Pattie Boyd's memoir & have the Beatles on the brain)

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Quotable

People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.

~ Pema Chödrön

[hat tip POD who has reminded me of the wonderfulness of Pema Chödrön's teachings]

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Quotable - You are the boss

Once we are adults, it is not anyone's job but our own to monitor what goes into our mouths. It's not that nutritional and medical information is not necessary or helpful; it is. It's not that loving friends and family are not necessary and helpful; they are. But when it gets down to the particular foods you choose to eat on a given day, you are the boss.

~ Geneen Roth, "The Constant Food Critic" GH June 2009

Here's a great discussion about whether maintenance is truly possible. Be sure to read the comments.

Excited about the Biggest Loser finale tonight? I am. While I'm OK with any of the finalists winning, I can relate more with Helen and Tara.

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Quotable - Ideal Self

It’s not about weight, it’s not about perfection, it’s about being the person who is driving your life and driving it in the direction you want to go. ...

Your ideal self is the person that you’ve always imagined being, and encompasses all the power, strength, and integrity, you’ve aspired to. This ideal invokes a sense of confidence, pride, and serenity, and is you, at your best.

Source: The Ideal Self Challenge

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