Difficult Transformation

Everyday starts the same way, I think to myself, "I'm going to exercise today" and it ends the same way, "I can't believe I ate the whole Ben & Jerry's". Why is it so hard? When I say to myself that I'm going to clean the apartment, I clean the whole thing. When I need to do laundry, I make time to do it, which is a big deal, because I hate doing laundry at my apartment. There is one washer and one dryer per floor, and there are some people in my building, I haven't caught them yet, who think it's appropriate to touch other peoples' laundry and take it out of the washer or dryer to put their stuff in. It's ridiculous!! Every time I went out to check my laundry last night someone had either opened the washer, or opened the dryer, which stops drying, but the timer continues to count down and it's 25 cents for 12 minutes, not cheap!

Anyways, back to the topic at hand... I realized that this "transformation" is going to be a lot more "difficult" than I thought. I looked up the definition of difficult transformation when I named this blog, but apparently I need to study it a little more.

Difficult: needing much effort or skill to accomplish, deal with, or understand ; characterized by or causing hardships or problems.

Transformation: a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance

No one said this would be easy, but I think my problem is that I want it to be easy, so I only do things as though it will be easy. For instance, committing to wake up at 5am with Jake to work out. It sounds kind of easy, however, I make it more difficult by staying up until midnight. Then when 5am comes, I push snooze for 2 hours and sleep in. It's crazy! My brother-in-law preaches that in order to be dedicated to anything, whether it's prayer, worship, Bible-reading, or exercise, you have to start slow. You can't wake up one day and decide to run a marathon, you have to train for it. You have to build a habit: a settled or regular tendency or practice, esp. one that is hard to give up.

So to begin my good habit of exercising, I'm going to commit to work out 2 days this week and next, then the third week ramp it up to 3 whole days. I already did water aerobics this week, which was actually kind of fun, for like 20 minutes, then I spent the other 30 wishing I was done! It's a pretty good work out. You don't realize how good until the next day when you can't lift your arms! To achieve my goal, I need to work out one more day before Sunday, so I will choose tomorrow. I'm home all day with not a lot to do, so I'll exercise. As for food, I've discovered my new favorite breakfast; the vivanno at Starbucks. It's banana and chocolate, 16grams of protein, which I think is really good. And when I can't go to Starbucks, I can mix a Carnations Instant Breakfast in the blender with a banana, it's sooooo good. I also bought some lowfat Ben & Jerry's this week, it's not bad. Baby steps!

amy