Howdy! Okay, so I just completed a great six-month transformer and inched in for the final weigh in. It was a complete miracle since I had to have surgery and was prohibited from exercising by my doc. Now that I'm cleared to exercise again, I'm ready to jump back into the saddle. This time, though, I'm expanding my existential repertoire:

Last competition, I wrote a lot about the tool of mindfulness and community in shaping my relationship with being healthy, being present and appreciating food, and taking on outside-the-box goals with fitness. I'm going to expand on this coloring-outside-the-lines approach, keeping the mindfulness, self-reflection, community support, and gratitude practices, but I'd like to also look at "wholeness" and "enoughness," concepts that rarely get brought in to weight loss competitions.

What would it look like to explore physical activity that was led by the body (like authentic movement) but to take it on in an everyday body-directed sort of way. For instance, when I wake up tomorrow morning, will my body want to do yoga? lift weights? run? do tai chi in the park? If I carve out time for my body to show me how it wants to move, could I allow for surprise and enjoyment? This would mark another departure from my drag-the-cadaver-to-the-gym approach to physical fitness that I've been giving up over the past few years.

I'm also wondering what it would look like to be more experimental with food, letting go of my standard "dog dish" of hummus, veggies, grape leaves, and tabouli and my spinach salads that I eat every day, almost without exception and getting creative in the kitchen. Would I find that trading in my staples for creativity leads to more appreciation and connection with the food as I'm eating it? Hmmm...

The desire to analyze and self-judge is alluring and strong. I want to celebrate the run I went on this morning and grieve the chocolate I ate before dinner. But isn't the fame and shame circle a bit dry and run out? Instead, I'd like to welcome in a whole new chapter - a chapter in which I embrace my farting, strong, hairy, miraculous body and begin to invite from it all the intimacy, vulnerability, juciness, and internal power that can be stoked. Now that's a body I'd want to live in and not "shape up"

What if physical motion and movement were a natural expression of the joy in me and of the processing of difficulty, each in their own turn? If I wasn't in a fitness regimine but rather was in a physical life, how would that alter how my body was active each day? Would I take on more slo-mo physical expression to allow the body to restore and renew? Would I take on some high intensity challenges without feeling the need to lock in to a 6 or 8 week class?

I'm interested in evolving my world beyond segments of time for "working out," meal prep, and eating. I"m interested in what's available when I don't have to prepare in advance to defend myself against overindulgence. What does the inner peace look like such that it doesn't much matter what everyone else is doing because my body's voice is so loud, clear, and joyous to me?