Dancing Through Life
My partner and I signed up for ballroom/latin dance classes and last night was our second night. There is nothing so emotionally and mentally exhausting than learning how to dance with someone who is the love of your life. Half way through the cha-cha, I was sure we were going to kill each other, but we both left tired and elated when we finally “got it”. It’s been a really fun adventure and we are learning so much about communicating and working together to separately learn the same skill. It’s been really fun. We’re building a date night into our week. It’s also a surprising workout, mostly because you’re on your toes so much of the night. The first week I made the mistake of not stretching afterwards and I felt it.
We also went on a bit of a cleanse together for a week. It was just for a week, but we’d been on a road trip together and gorged ourselves on rich food. We took a week off from all irritating or heavy food. It was so hard to think ahead – we’re both busy people, and while we love to cook, we often eat late because we don’t plan ahead. When your options for food are so restricted, there’s no such thing as a last minute bowl of pasta or ordering in. It was tough, but we both felt quite…cleansed?…by the end of it. I’m not sure I love cleansing, but sometimes it’s a nice way to reset your eating habits. For me, I was already avoiding junk food, so cleansing wasn’t a big shift. For my partner, it was really hard.
However, now we are both in the habit of thinking of healthy things to eat together instead of just grabbing a quick snack. In that way, it helped us to think of alternatives to junk food and we have a huge tub of trail mix in our truck now that is there for emergencies instead of grabbing a coke and chips.
I’m not sure that I’m doing enough activity to see a huge physical change yet, but I have two structured weekly activities built into my life and as they become more solidified habits, I can only build. It’s nice to add habits one at a time, instead of trying to change everything over night. I find that it gives me a feeling of success that I can build from, instead of failure because I haven’t completely shifted my behaviour overnight. This way, it’s gradual, but sustainable.
It feels good.
The Writing Detox 
one step at a time!