My Personal Journey and Why I Think Walking is the Bee’s Knees!
By Jessica Tha Goddess – January 3, 2021
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I promised that YevOne would offer SIMPLE solutions for everyday issues so that together we could improve ourselves, and our lives, one small step at a time. As promised, one of my first suggestions to help improve yourself and your life is WALKING. It is a simple but powerful action you can take to create balance in your life and achieve total wellness. The best part is you can get started now – one step at a time!
Every day, or every other day depending on what is going on in my life, I go for a walk. I am blessed because I have my child to walk with. Rain, shine, sleet, or snow – just like the postal workers, we are out there.
Today it was rather cold and snowy. I said to my son as we passed the mountains of snow all around us, and trudged through un-shoveled sidewalks and slushy roads, that the last time I walked in this weather was when I had no choice.
As a child, I had long walks to school no matter what the weather. My grandma, a single parent to myself and my uncle, did not own a car – shoot, she didn’t even have a license. So, when they would cancel school mid-day because of a blizzard or worse, a hailstorm – my butt was getting pelted all the way home.
I remember I would watch, teary eyed, as my friends piled into their parent’s cars. Concerned moms and dads rushing in the school, sheltering their children under heavy coats and umbrellas, and ushering them into warm waiting cars. Occasionally my friend George’s mom would offer me a ride – which was amazing because George did not live in my direction at all. He lived in the big homes that people owned. I lived in the hood. George’s mom was a saint for that! But often many of us kids from the hood were on our own – and so running through knee high-snow or sprinting from golf-ball sized hail was the name of the game. Maybe that’s where I got my thick thighs from – mother nature’s winter Olympics.
Alas, we grow up. We get cars. We say – man walking in the snow sucked; and we never do it again…until now!
After years of poor eating habits, office jobs, injuries, and health challenges – the pounds slowly (or not so slowly) packed on. I tried a lot of quick fixes to lose weight – all extreme – and none of which worked long term.
Like most people I was desperate for change…NOW!!! I wanted to look my best and be rid of this problem asap! What I have learnt (the hard way), is that when you are dealing with real weight issues there is something a lot deeper that a quick diet just will not address. As I began to work through some of my childhood baggage and heal past wounds, I was better able to connect with and listen to my body. Today, I know my heart tells me that I truly need to love myself back to total wellness, to a healthy weight, and to a lifestyle that God’s love would want for me. I need to be as God envisioned and that takes time, great decisions made every day on what healing fuel to put into my body, and what healthy loving movements to do…like walking!
For me, the quick diet was probably another way to avoid doing the tough work of deep healing that my body, mind, emotions, heart, inner-child, and soul truly needed.
Each extreme diet increased damage to my body and the second last one landed me in the hospital. I wanted to be fit, to act like I didn’t suffer the trauma I had endured throughout my life. Traumas that were deep, unresolved, and that led to my lack of relationship with my body which then led to my weight management challenges.
So, even though I ended up in hospital from an extreme diet, I went for round two in 2018 and instead of leaving in a couple days with a warning – this time I was in hospital for a month and diagnosed with life-threatening embolisms.
While no one has formally confirmed it, though I have had some medical nods of agreement when I disclose my theory; I believe that one of the factors that led to my illness was a diet I did where all I ate were green vegetables, lean protein, and highly processed fat-free sugar-free snacks. I am a great student, so I did not cheat even once – if it wasn’t green or lean then I did not eat it. For me – the results were extreme in every way. I dropped about 40 pounds in a couple months and I was thrilled. Then I got sick, and I was not so thrilled anymore.
I think the excessive vitamin K from all the green vegetables, especially kale, that I ate possibly thickened my blood causing clotting. I also think I was dehydrated. I was swimming and doing water aerobics about two hours every day and then working out with a trainer an hour and a half three days a week. I was super fit, super-fast…until I became super sick!!!
Since then, I have slowly been working to strengthen my mind, body, and soul.
My focus shifted from the fast-paced life of hard workouts, restrictive diets, and round the clock business – to a life and pace that values and seeks balance.
Now, it’s about whole foods, gentle workouts, and increased strength. It’s about loving myself and listening to my inner voice. It’s about working with my body, and loving my body, instead of trying to strong arm it into submission.
I make my eating decisions based on what my higher self, the Goddess within, tells me I need. Magnesium? Great, I will add cocoa powder or nibs. Iron? Great, I will add some spinach to my smoothie and maybe some beats for hemoglobin. When I am not feeling well it’s pretty clear my lungs need fresh air – time for a walk!
While I have a long way to go to meet my goals, I have also come a long way too. The most important thing is this time instead of feeling my body become depleted when restricting and strong arming it; I now feel it being nourished, I feel myself healing, I see the changes, and I feel stronger every day. I also feel more alert, I remember more, and my anxiety has improved so much because my daily walks reduce my stress. Sometimes the long route is the shortest route. If I knew then what I know now I would have skipped the get fit quick schemes and loved myself into total wellness from the beginning.
I have come to value consistency because I understand it is a very simple but very critical component of success. I have a slow and steady model. It feels gentle. It is the kind of relationship I want to have with me.
Walking works – in fact, it has worked better, long term, than all my grueling over the top extreme measures! I wrang in 2021 a whopping 30 pounds lighter than I was when I started walking in late 2020! It was a journey building the discipline and motivation to stick with it – but just like I gradually put on the weight, I am committed to gradually taking it off.
Walking is not only great for weight loss and management, it also helps to improve health in many other ways. So even if you feel as fit as a fiddle, adding a nice walk to your day will bring you so many blessings, and will add years to your life.
Click here for list of benefits that come with regular walking.
Get started, it really is as easy as putting one foot in front of the other!
Xoxo Jessica Tha Goddess
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