Just Swing

      Two years ago I started jogging.   To beat the stress, I added walking and jogging, thinking that exercising more would give me a benefit of losing five extra pounds that I gained in spite of my strict daily regimen.

      I downloaded "lose it" app on my iPhone and began calculating each gram of food that was going into my mouth. My goal was to restore my sleep to be able to look and perform even better.
     Thinking that 10 thousand steps and 900 calories a day will do the job, I decided to keep my yoga and pilates practice to maintain flexibility. In an instance, I got addicted to uploading my daily pedometer reading into a fitness software to get digital praises and bonuses from my health insurance company each night. In sixteen weeks, 10 thousand steps a day took me on a virtual journey around the world. I was thrilled. Instead of being fatigued, I felt energized, ecstatic, and younger than ever though the only world attraction I saw on this journey was an Indian Temple right in my neighborhood. I thought about myself as a super gutsy woman, who didn't need rest.
     For another six months, I was bragging to my friends about my numbers going up until I realized that my other numbers went up as well: instead of losing, I gained five pounds...
    The doctor said that I put my body into starvation mode, and the body paid me back, turning itself into a "camel mode," fighting my personal agenda of becoming a super slender marathon-runner.
     Being stubborn, instead of listening to the doctor and slowing down, I added extra mileage to my distance and lightened up my menu even more. To my amusement, the weight went up again, and I lost sleep completely.
     Ten extra pounds later, I noticed that my motivation to walk usual 4-5 miles a day suddenly evaporated along with my stamina and energy. That was odd. That was when my husband got me a hammock.
     "Why hammock? I can't slow down! I need to exercise even more!"
     I swing in my hammock, chilling and sense my energy coming back. The pounds are shedding off on their own just because the emotional and physical stress is gone, and I started sleeping like a baby. My creativity and my effectiveness skyrocketed.
     And now, being rested, I added jogging, swimming, and yoga back, and the body welcomed it.
     My hammock taught me one more lesson of life: it is important once in a while to do nothing, but swing.