You can lead a horse to water...

But under no circumstances can you guilt her into exercise!!

The weight of my soul is currently 120kg, and that is actually down over the last 18 months by approx 7kg, I am the weight of the bigger, 'Biggest Loser' contestants.

As a part of my personal growth mission, I have a personal reduction mission. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Well I think for me it has been a few steps forward, a few steps back for both.

I can totally 'get it', and have my routine going so well, minimal 'bonus' food, no binging, exercise and the my life organised and then I sabotage myself twice, the second one I've only come to realise last night. I'll explain.

I start to feel so 'on top of it' that my bossy self ( who really should know better) says "hey you' ve really got this down now, you totally understand life and the universe, you are at peace with yourself and the meaning of life is indeed 1. Why don't you just take a little break...". And that my friend is the beginning of my slow decent into a depressive pit, with a side of anxiety.

Up until last night I used to think that was my problem, I just wasn't disciplined enough. However after mulling over some of the wisdoms from my current favourite books "Eat, Love, Pray" and "The Handbook to Higher Consciousness", I've realised that perhaps the problem was I wasn't loving myself unconditionally. "The Handbook to Higher Consciousness" (or the Handbook as it shall here after be called), calls on us to love everyone unconditionally, including ourselves.

I have been really, really loving myself when I do 'the right thing', follow my routines, stick to my budget, put in enough time for my little one and dearest man, exercise and eat well, but if it started to slide I'd get all disappointed with myself, "oh well here you go again". If I had the energy, I'd tell myself to fight it, and would try and draw some energy from the anger within me to make some positive steps, and it did work sometimes.

Of course anyone with depression will realise that it can suck all of the energy out of you, so if I didn't muster the energy to fight, I'd crash and burn and have to take a few days to pick myself back up again ( this is a VAST improvement on the weeks and months of the past). Yesterday was one such blegh day.

Just before I went to bed I decided instead of trying to muster the strength for anger, I'd try throwing out unconditional love to my sorry little self. I managed to go to sleep feeling love towards myself. How I managed this I'm not entirely sure, but in The Handbook they discuss how our emotions come from conditioned responses, decisions made when we were too small to understand the world. We can use all of our emotions to help us in our path to higher consciousness by looking at what we wanted so badly that its lack of fulfilment could alter our mood so much.To take that aching desire and change it to a preference. If I merely preferred myself to be organised and on top of things, then I could love myself regardless. Make sense? maybe not, perhaps if you are really interested you could check out the book, or try google, and see what it throws at you.

Well my little one was up half the night, and I with her, so I didn't get up at 5.30 to exercise or meditate, or do yoga. In fact I got up at 9am. I had lots to do including groceries and washing. But instead of the panic and disappointment, while I berated myself frantically trying to regain my 'path of perfection', I thought of an action plan. Go and visit a friend, do the groceries, come home and finish off other things.

It worked. In fact I'm typing this post workout, 20 minute workout, but with Jillian Michaels (from Biggest Loser USA), you can be sure that she s making it count!

So yes, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot MAKE her exercise, but if you give her some space, and tell her she's doing ok just the way she is, then she may just surprise you and get up and do it anyway!