Undoing What Nature Has Done to Us

"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child [...]." - The Book of Mormon, Mosiah 3:19

I've been thinking a lot about my fitness journey. February is almost over, my diet has not been anywhere near perfect. My work outs are hit or miss, and though I've lost 6 lbs in 2 months,  I haven't been satisfied with my progress. Still, my brother gave me a really great piece of advice: look at my growth not in terms of weeks or months,  but in terms of years. So that's what I'm doing. Hayley the Brave, A Work in Progress: Year One.

Part of this journey has been struggling with low self esteem, getting down to the heart of who and what I am and how that connects to what I look like and how I feel. During that process, I've had to isolate my reasons for getting fit and improving myself. It can't just be to look better. It has to be more meaningful than that. So my quest has led me to the conclusion that becoming fit is simply one way I am trying to undo what nature has done to me.

Now some of you are thinking, nature is good. Be natural. We need to embrace our nature! But I don't mean nature as in "the way we are born" -- I mean nature as in the natural state in which we exist in the world. The world in which we now live is no Garden of Eden. The nature we are born into, the natural state if you will, is one of corruption and frailty. I believe the purpose of life is to overcome that natural state and transcend into a higher one, a plane of being that more closely resembles the eternal place from which we all came. So if we are to overcome our carnal, natural state, thereby discovering the eternal, glorious, holy being within us, we must kick addictions, bad habits, the things of this world that are holding us back from becoming who we were meant to be all along.

I remember reading a quote once that said something like, "Maybe life isn't so much about learning, as it is about un-learning all the things the world taught us to be." I've decided that my journey to become fit, strong, and healthy isn't just about the size of my waist. It is about recapturing the healthy, whole human being I'm supposed to be. This means eating right not because I'm worried about my calories, but because I'm worried about what I'm putting in to my body and what it is doing to me long term. This means signing up for obstacle course races to prove to myself that I am not weak or scrawny -- I am fearless and strong! It means getting enough sleep so that I can function and perform to my fullest potential every day. It means deleting 90% of my friends on Facebook so that I can avoid negativity, connect on a real, personal level with people, and have time to develop my hobbies again. It means taking vitamins and drinking enough water because I care about the quality of my life not just now, but in the decades to come. 

So, my stomach might still be flabby and I can't yet do a single pull-up, but I'm not on a diet and I'm not on an exercise-kick. I'm on a journey, changing my way of life, because I'm tired of the natural man within me. I'm tired of the person in my heart and in my brain who has told me my entire life that it's okay to be a food addict and that I'll never be strong because that lifestyle just isn't for me. I'm taking my life back by taking my body back, one year at a time.