I believe there are a lot of diet theories that can easily lead you astray. For example, you can eat virtually as much food as you want on the Atkins diet and easily lose weight. Or, very low fat diets may allow you the same thing: you can eat a lot of food as long as it contains very little fat. I was momentarily convinced that eating foods with higher alkalinity could be a good way to lose weight. Bottom line, however, is that to lose weight, you have to eat significantly less calories and food than your overweight body naturally desires and when you do this, you will experience some hunger pains and sometimes suffer a little bit!! Dang, I hate to suffer!! Haven’t I spent a lifetime of making my life more comfortable?
When we moved into our new house, there was a little quote hanging on one of the bulletin boards that made me think: ”You can do hard things.” Hmmm, I thought, but why? And, what are we talking about, read hard books? Solve hard math questions? Certainly not hike big mountains or run far and sweat a lot, or have less to eat than you want or sleep somewhere with no air conditioning!! Perhaps I can do hard things, but I don’t really want to do hard things.
And yet the phrase has stuck with me and I’ve realized more and more how profound it really is. Rick learned how to do hard things. Mary is doing some hard things. My buddy Steve Roberts is doing very hard things and Dougie has always done a multitude of hard things. Mom did many many hard things, so why can’t I and why don’t I? So, note to myself, Doug, you too can do hard things, especially if the hard things will improve your overall well being, health and happiness. And it turns out that doing hard things can be done in bite-sized chunks, in the case of dieting, 6 or 7 bite-sized chunks a day instead of the normal feeding frenzy with many multiple bite sized chunks three to four times per day, which of course, leads you into a world of high blood sugar, tight trousers, sweating while doing little easy tasks, and many other ugly things that I won’t mention here.
You can do hard things. You CAN do hard things! You can DO hard things! You can do HARD THINGS! Doug, you can do hard things, and really, they’re not that hard compared to the hard things my friends and family are able to do.
