#WhyIShaklee + 5-Day Reset

You Don't Have to Try So Hard

As a follow-up to my last post, I have not been trying so hard.

Aside from the wedding I went to, I have not worn any makeup other than eye liner and mascara in three weeks.

If I'm being honest, I miss the compliments.

But I like the time I spend thinking more about God or about school in the mornings.

I won't say this is because I haven't been wearing makeup, but doors have been opening up for me. I know at least one of those doors opened because I was discussing my return to my natural state with someone.

I've spent more time writing, more time working out, more time journaling.

This photo was taken today while I was working on a project with a friend. Before I left my house (15 minutes late), I thought about putting on a whole face of makeup, but decided it was unnecessary.  I guess I knew in my gut that we would take photos.  When my friend starting taking candids of me while I was writing, I said, "If I'd known you wanted to take pics, I'd have been cuter." He said "You don't have to be cute to make history."  I'd have preferred he say, "You're cute enough already." But, what he did say is true.  I also know I will look back in twenty years and either think "I should have fixed my hair and worn makeup" or think "That was when I stopped caring so much about my outward appearance. I cared more about what I was doing than how I looked doing it."

For this perspective and for a huge spiritual step in the right direction, I thank my friend Maria Atkinson who beautifully walks around Haiti wearing no makeup, hair sometimes in dreadlocks or cornrows, and sometimes in a pixie cut, loving people to life. You are beautiful.  If people begin to be able to look at me and see anything like what I see when I look at you then I will consider myself a success.

My conclusion is that Colbie was right: you don't have to try so hard. You definitely don't have to give it all away.
She was also wrong, because there are some things you should try at, some things you should let break you.  I've decided to try and walk a few miles a few times a week, and do yoga on the off days if not every day.  I've decided to try and eat only food that will nourish me.  In fact, my mom and I are doing a 5-Day Reset with Shaklee starting tomorrow. Then extreme clean eating until Thanksgiving when I'll assess my progress.

I think what I really learned is that you have to try at the right things. And the real message is that you don't have to fit into someone else's mold.  I don't have to be a glamor girl.  I genuinely like pretty and pink and sparkles and fashion, but I like them better when I'm healthier.  Until I'm healthy, it's like dressing up a garbage can. That doesn't make much sense.
Thank you for the burst of inspiration today from Carlie, @RegularGirlFitness (on Instagram), also.

And I need to remain focused on the spiritual, the eternal, also. If I was there, and we talked, and we prayed, and we felt God together, does it matter how I looked?  I think, not really.

"Do you like you?"

Just Get Up

Is this true or is it a lie?

She sings so beautifully and she looks so sincere. But is she lying?

"You don't have to try so hard.
You don't have to give it all away.
You just have to get up, get up, get up, get up.
You don't have to change a single thing.
You don't have to try so hard.
You don't have to bend until you break.
You just have to get up, get up, get up, get up.
You don't have to change a single thing.
You don't have to try..."

Because even the sweetest of people want you to stop eating meat or stop eating sugar or start working out or work out more.  They want you to wear this or that, keep chemicals on or off your hair.  They want you to cover up more or less.

If this were true, it would revolutionize my world.
I love pink and sparkles, makeup and fashion...
...because I like external things to tell me I'm pretty.

Without makeup, you can see the stress blemishes on my skin and the dark circles from no sleep under my eyes.
Without enough cute clothes you can see all the extra pounds I carry around because I eat my emotions.

I would give anything to be able to just get up and go...and not feel ugly.

Last week, a coworker of mine saw me - wearing no makeup and my glasses - and said, "Oh you don't have on all your eye makeup today. I always look forward to your eyes." I told my coworker, "It takes me 30 minutes to put my face on. I chose to sleep today." And, even though I forgot to set my alarm this morning, I still put on my full face this morning, so I wouldn't disappoint.

I fought with someone I consider a friend because I was trying with everything in me to change my body and she was trying to help and it wasn't working.  I missed out on her light for weeks because of that. Even now when I see her, I sometimes have to close my eyes to remember that she is a beautiful soul and not just a hot body.

I have a family member whose most distinguishing factor to me is that she is always either on a food challenge or a fitness challenge. Always. Sometimes both.

And before someone makes this argument, I am not saying that health doesn't matter.  It does. It definitely does.  But when you already feel pressure from every angle, the pressure to be healthy is not separate. It's all just pressure.

I have been lying/evading/covering this up for almost a year...I have serious food issues.  I punish myself with food. I either over-eat on purpose as punishment or I starve myself for the same reasons.  I have cried over many meals.
Thank you to my sweet friend, Bekah, for sharing her story on this topic.

Today I threw a fit because my Old Navy account had a glitch and I couldn't buy $200 worth of clothes. I have parent teacher conferences tomorrow and I wanted to look adorable.

I wish the girl pictured above got as many compliments and likes as the girl with the awesome mascara or the cute outfits. 

I want to stop trying. 

I have never been more afraid of anything.

I also need to apologize to everyone I have ever made feel like they needed more makeup, cuter or different hair, or any kind of change in order to be pretty.  I never meant to be malicious, but I was applying the same rules to you that I am suffering under. I pray you didn't suffer under my word.  I am so sorry. You don't have to try.

Endnote: If I had to pick ONE thing that I believe is worth the effort and conformity, it would be the food I find and take in.  If you had to pick ONE thing to try, which would it be?

Progress - video

Watch this 5-minute video for health  updates.

YAY 5 pounds!!

Let's Get Started

It's Monday, Sept. 9! Go weigh and measure yourself and sign up at myfitnesspal.com. Send an email to LW4PC@outlook.com and check out my cousin's blog for all the info.

If you want to see my thoughts and feelings on the process, look at najjustiz.tumblr.com . I'm not going to post them here.

If you have 10 mins, watch this video. If not, just do the steps I said above. This video is from last week, but don't be alarmed by the date. Just watch and join us!

Mistakes: Sept. 9 to Dec 30 is 15 weeks - two weeks longer than Shaklee's Turnaround program. Also, the metabolic boosting supplement is taken thrice daily, not once.

NOTE: You can - and I would love you to - join this challenge even without buying any product. But if you want product, I have some! And it's what I'm using.

Countdown to the New Year

Please pause for a break in our regularly scheduled programming.

I am not done with the identity series. I still want to tell you about womanhood and being a writer. Unfortunately I need to first tell you about race and "the N word"...BUT before all that.....

If there was one more thing I wanted to do by the end of the year, it would be lose several pounds. I know I talk about health on here a lot, and you're probably like: "why doesn't she get it together already?" But I am trying. I am a busy busy woman.

But thanks to my sweet cousin Autumn, over at My Fat 2 Fit Life, I am ready to go full speed ahead. And I think you should join me. Check out this video.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Please let me know.

Identity: Teacher

Here's another video. I basically just ramble about being a teacher and what the first almost week was like.


 I will film an update this week, because it took me way too many days to edit this.

Note: I love the Teach So Hard movement and following other teachers on social networks. It's nice to have support.

Things are good still.
I'm taking this week away from TV and movies to pray more and get my schedule worked out. (I'm gonna have to ask my cousin to DVR Graceland.) Grad school starts this week too. I'm behind on everything. This past week was a sleepy, not totally productive week. Better this upcoming week, I know!

Writer, Bridge Builder

I apologize for the long delay between posts. And for picking it back up on a Friday when people aren't really online that much.

I had opened a discussion about identity.  Who do you identify as?
Today I'm going to discuss the aspect of my identity that is a writer, and why.

"Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open." - Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Why write what's disturbing and scary? Sometimes so I can get it out of myself. Sometimes what we are silent about settles in our bodies and festers creating not only unhappiness, but sickness. Sometimes you have to split open and empty out before you can begin to heal.

"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard." - David McCullough

Many people say I over-think. My rebuttal is that it's because I'm a writer.  When I don't export my thoughts onto the page, they run circles in my head and it makes conversations with friends a little confusing.  That's part of the reason for this blog.
Also, I believe that the thoughts I have are probably similar to the thoughts some other young women have.  So if I can think clearly about a topic and write about it, maybe I can help someone else think clearer.

"There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times." - Yevgeny Zamyatin, A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin

I want to explode someone's thinking about love, about why we live our lives, about God, about religion, about America, about beauty.  I want someone to read a book of mine and have their whole thought process changed. 

 
I want to help you get from here to there, from please to thank you, from amen (so let it be) to there it is.  Wherever you are in life right now, no matter how great or terrible, there is a better place. I want to help you get there.  For me, writing (and to a vaguely lesser degree, performing and speaking or preaching) is how I show people the bridge from where you are to where you want to be.  A blog post, a poem, a story, a book can be your bridge. 

That's why I teach high school, to help kids get from childhood to adulthood. 
That's why I teach reading/English/language arts, because if there is nothing else available, there will always be a public library with Bibles, books and periodicals to help you build your bridge.
That's why I write, to move people from one emotional or intellectual place to the next.
That's why I perform, to draw out people's feelings and inspire them to take the next step.
This is my heart, my calling, my ministry.

Health and finances are my personal areas of struggle where I needed someone or something to help me build my own bridge, and help me walk across it.  I am embarking on a journey to tackle both of those areas of opportunity at once. When I get to the other side, I can tell my story.  I need to be healthier so I can live a long life telling and retelling the story, helping people build.  I need to be more financially stable so that I have freedom to travel and give into the ministry and Kingdom.

I'm trying to get like my friend Jabee: "Build a bridge and get over it. I went from never leaving home to flying over it."