Gunning For A Change

By Stephanie Trees
 * Guest Writer*  who just happens to be my sister!

Change. It’s a word. Just a word that can make someone spin out of control.  Simply stated is not scary at all. You change your clothes, your shoes, your mind, every day.  But when you use the word change in a sentence like “I need a change” or “I need to change jobs” and for me “I need to change my unhealthy lifestyle”.

Change becomes the monster in the closet. 

So you don’t say the word – or think the word. You pretend that it is not even something you want or need. You don’t want to peek in the closet because you are afraid of what you may find – like yourself struggling to make good on something, anything.  So you ignore change, but eventually the monster in the closet is going get you to say the word aloud. Once it is out there – you have to do something with it. Fundamentally, change is inevitable. So you have to roll with the punches and punch that monster in the closet.  Begin to make the changes necessary for your life.  

That being said, I punched that monster and I have joined the Gunnar Challenge to start facilitating a change in my lifestyle. I needed help and Gunnar Peterson’s “Get Great in 8”. It is a simply stated, user friendly eating and exercise plan. I love it, truly. It makes sense to me. The premise:  Energy In minus Energy Out is easy to wrap your mind around what you do during the day. Take in less food than you expend.  That language takes some of the emotion out of it and makes it less diet like and more physiological. Weight loss is physiological so again it makes sense to me. Additionally, I am an emotional person, so physiological change appeals to me. I don’t have to sit and talk about why I’m fat or why I was or wasn’t successful. I just make sure that my Energy Out is more that my Energy In and it’s done.

It took my two years to make me even think of the word change much less actually put a plan into action and follow it through fruition. Yet, here I am. Changing. Two weeks in and pounds are being lost.  I know that you can’t rate change on two weeks of work, but it is better than ignoring the monster in the closet – he can be really annoying.