Whatcha Weigh Monday?!

well. i did really good this week, but kinda slacked on the exercise end of things. Also, I ate out every meal this weekend. I made good choices, yet I just think it was more rich food then I had been used to. :) but still. I thought for sure I was good to go this week.

at weigh-in this morning:

+1.0

yes my friends, that is indeed a PLUS sign :(

So accordingly... this week's TIP OF THE WEEK is very hippy and funny but super interesting :)

part of my problem is that I get SOOOOOO fixated on little things, like eating a 5 calorie stick of gum used to have to be tracked on my food planner. :) I have really been working on seeing the big picture and instead of thinking about how unexpected donuts at work would throw off my WHOLE day, I am trying to think more in terms of okay, an unexpected donut one morning in the scheme of my whole WEEK, that instantly calms my anxiety. sooo...

TIP OF THE WEEK:

wabi sabi

so my dear little counselor likes to copy articles from her magazines and books and give them to me. This one at first I thought was kinda kooky, but it is a very interesting concept.

wabi sabi is the Japanese art of appreciating the beauty in the naturally imperfect world.

okay... stick with me. another definition? "Wabi Sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete, the antithesis of our classical Western notion of beauty was something perfect, enduring, monumental."

this article brings up some examples:

~the author used to get sooo annoyed that every single week when she would see a trail of oily fingerprints on the wall leading to her upstairs. This used to mean another chore on her to-do list. Clean off the finger prints, yet again. But with Wabi Sabi, you would try to view those fingerprints as the story of her daughter's nightly treks up to bed.

~in western culture, we would see a perfectly formed hothouse tomato shipped in from a sunshine state much more beautiful than a tomato picked up one's own backyard garden, that is lumpy, uneven and definitely not nicely shaped.

~the article compares one of those older woman's faces from a National Geographic magazine, full of wrinkles, smile lines and crows feet to that of a 60 year old botox patient from Hollywood. Our Western culture would give the beauty award to the Hollywood queen, while Wabi Sabi would look for the beauty and the experiences and to appreciate the signs of aging.

so yes. kind of out there, but very intriguing. :)

i liked the ending of the article

"the Japanese philosophy of wabi sabi celebrates beauty in what's natural; flaws and all. Japanese antique bowls for instance are prized BECAUSE (not IN SPITE) of their drips and cracks. What if we learned to prize the drips and cracks in our messy lives?"

so yes. maybe i've lost my marbles. buut i dunno about you, but this whole abandoning the concept of "perfect"sounds good to me :) now i'm off to eat some valentine candy :) because those crystallized heart jelly candies are sure beautiful to me ;)

if that was all a little too out there for ya, don't worry :)

Bob Harper (Biggest Loser trainer) has a tip of the week too:

every morning this week, right when you wake up, drink an entire glass of water :)

haha. and come on, wabi sabi is SO fun to say ;) admit it.