What I have been missing out on...

 My wise mother once told me:

No matter what you chose to do, or not to do, you always pay a price. 

During the past 8 months, while I have been so invested in preparing for this upcoming show, I have paid a high price. I have missed out on a lot of significant dates, social events and experiences. Allow me to list the ones that stick out the most in my memory for you:

1.- On my 2 week trip to Mexico in December: all the food like tacos, quesadillas, grandma's cooking, Mexican beer, and other Mexican delicacies I could have consumed; spending long lazy hours at the beach and playing beach volleyball instead of having to go back to the room hotel every 3 hrs for my meals, and 2 a day to the gym at the basement of the hotel.

2.- December holidays: probably no need to list all the social and food related events that happen around this time of the year with both family and friends.I am pretty sure you could come up with a list of your own and mine would not be so different.

3.- My birthday: Typically consisting of a weekend long binge of happiness. Yes I am known for training like a champ, but I am also famous for binging like a champ.

4.- My wedding anniversary: Consisting on a day of homemade tower of fluffy pancakes, topped with another tower of greasy bacon and prepared with all sorts of additives such as cream cheese, Mexican dulce de leche, jam, peanut butter, nutella, maple syrup and anything we see fit for the recipe; also followed by a movie with refillable popcorn and closing the day with an all you can eat sushi buffet.

5.- Friend events such as birthdays and weekend gatherings, to which I or Omar, not even get invited to anymore, maybe in part because people feel they support us in not making us suffer by having us there while they eat and drink, and partly because in declining some party offers we have been forgotten and not regarded as sociable entities anymore.

 6.-Easter: which is a celebration that me and Omar adopted when we came to live to Canada, and for which usually a couple of family's gladly open their doors to adopt this two pair of Mexicans, to gladly join in the celebration with their loved ones. Of course, food is always a big part of this event.

7.- Others that I can't really remember at the moment, but are equally important and significant in every person's life.

But today I woke up and it hit me like a slap on the face! There is something a lot bigger and far more important that I have been missing out on for a long time and what it is, like my wise father says:

To live everyday like it is the first and last of your life.

It has taken me 8 months to realize that I have learned the one of the most valuable lessons in life, one that is also easy to forget and one which I might forget at some point in the future again. 

As I look back to my life to the period between 2008 - 2010 I am a bit saddened to realize that I had completely forgotten this lesson and I spent most of the time in a blurry period of darkness. Today I am extremely thankful for the fact that choosing to take on this journey and choosing to give up some of the above has enabled me to relearn how to live this life like today is the first and last of my life.

Ok, so pretty words are not going to cut it for you, my lovely audience, so let me show you with pictures how I did it and how I learned my lesson.

1.- On my 2 week trip to Mexico on December:

While I still had 1 cheat meal a week. I carefully planned my 2 cheats. One of them had to be a very special place to me, both in flavors and in childhood memories. There is a market place about 2 kilometers away from my home in Mexico, where my dad used to take my brother and me every Sunday to eat Pancita ( I believe other names for it could be cow belly soup, or Menudo) accompanied by real corn, thick and freshly made tortillas.

Every Sunday has become every year now. But my heart and my stomach, faithfully wait a full year for the chance to meet again with this soup and this place. This past December I took my husband to share in.

2.- December Holidays: I decided to join in whether it was a restaurant or a house party and instead of focusing on enjoying the food, focused on enjoying the company, from the brotherly and sisterly cousins, to the dirty old uncle.

Me and Omar also hosted a Mexican mafia party at our small apartment.

 

3.- On my birthday, I am very thankful to all my coworkers who busted into the office I was working at and sang happy birthday to me, accompanied by a priceless gift. This gift is precious because it also celebrates the date my husband and I received our permanent resident cards! BEST GIFT EVER!

 

4.- On my wedding anniversary my husband made me blush with a beautiful surprise bouquet that arrived at the end of our Thursday club meeting and that for the past 5 days has been overflowering (yes I just made up that word) my house with delicious aromas.

We also packed our 4th meal (fish and veggies) and drove down to eat it by the lake, as we let Maya, our husky, off leash to run around and eat random stuff that dogs can always find by the lake.

5.- Friend events: yes I did attend friend events, and yes I brought my own food in topper wears. I also want to share that one of the most meaningful events was to accompany my friend and client Lynn in the journey that we created together that took her to the UFE stage on April 7th, where she placed 6th in Masters Fitness Model and when we arrived to a goal milestone after working together for 1 year.

I also attended and enjoyed other events such as the Company Party.

Want to hear a funny story?

As Lynn's cupcakes were getting all dressed up and ready for the party I told them that I would put a piece the size of my finger nail on my mouth and them spit it out, just to remember the green tea flavored cupcakes that stole my other heart. There were other 4 people in the kitchen watching and they all looked wide eyes at me and told me NO, because I would end up swallowing it.

Anyways, I convinced that they could trust me. So I put the tiny piece in my mouth and not even 2 seconds in, Lynn was ready to strangle and slap be as she started to yell:

"Spit it out! Spit it out! That is too long, I will not let you swallow it"

I immediately spat it out for fear of my life from Lynn's murderous look in her face, and enormous muscles she developed over a year. I was scared!

These are the cupcakes I never ate.

6.- Easter: Yes I did show up to Lynn's party (LMC Sweets, Oakville's best creative cake and sweet decorator) and strangely derived pleasure from watching other people eat everything that I would not eat, while I sipped on strawberry-kiwi Crystal light.

Home made heavenly maple pie!

 

Cream cheese cookies!

And not to mention a peanut butter-chocolate-brownie-pie that the pure smell of it was enough to make anyone go on their knees and beg for mercy.

This is what I learned!

 By taking away something that I always took for granted (the freedom to eat anything and to do anything) I had to reinvent my everyday and relearn how to derive pleasure from other things:

1.- I developed the ability to watch junk food on tv or anywhere, close my eyes and force my brain to send the signal to my body to have the exact same experience as if I was eating that food. Yes! If you have ever done it, you are not crazy. Such an ability exists, it is called mind over matter.

2.- I learned how actually food smells better than what it tastes. So I worked on my ability to smell food rather than eat it.

3.- I learned to enjoy every single precious bit of food, whether it is a piece of lettuce or a fish fillet. Every single bite is an explosion of exotic and unique flavor. 

4.- I learned to enjoy people's company and social events without linking it to food. I learned that a glass of sparkling water can be as fulfilling as a beer, and again, a piece of lettuce can serve as a cookie as far as satisfying the chewing reflex in my mouth.

5.- I learned to not let people's comments about my food or my training habits bother me, instead they became insights as to how they feel in their own lives and opened up a chance for me to get to know them better by turning their comment into a positive window of opportunity.

6.- I learned how my life is happening 24 hrs a day, not in 2 weeks when I do my show, not in 40 minutes when I finish my cardio, not in 15 hours when I finish my shift at the gym. So I started enjoying everything, even dressing up a little ridiculous, often including bright pink and some sort of cut out shirt when I go to train at the gym :)

I got my ability to live in the here and now back!

Bottom line: if a person loses a leg, they don't spend their whole life mourning the lost leg. They reinvent themselves as a one legged person and relearn how to live their lives.

Reinvent yourself everyday and relearn other ways of making it count!