Thanks
We cooked at home and had better meals than ever, got healthier, enjoyed eating together.
It wasn’t all roses and cream, but there were many, many positive things that came out of this scarcity. When you are forced to cut back, you can moan, or you can find joy. We chose the path that made us happiest.
And once we were out of debt, that was one of the most liberating things ever. So we reached an amazing destination, but the journey was just as wondrous.
Reducing Clutter
Clutter is another scary thing for a lot of people. Just facing the piles of clutter in your home can be overwhelming. In truth, clutter is a mountain of procrastination … putting off decisions and fears and emotional issues and shopping addictions and more. Facing those fears and issues is too much for most of us.
I faced them, and learned that when you deal with these fears and emotions, even a little at a time, it is freeing. You feel clean and spare, not just because you’re burdened with fewer possessions, but because you’re burdened with less emotional baggage that you’re hiding in the back of your mind.
Reducing our clutter meant tough choices, it meant a lot of discussion about what we wanted and why we really need things, it meant learning a whole host of new habits.
But it also meant getting rid of things that were weighing us down, that we didn’t need but that were still costing us time and energy and mental cycles. We learned to love a spare-looking room, and the amazing feeling of sitting or lying around in a room that was clean and uncluttered.
Living with fewer possessions can be a pure joy that is unmatched by anything you can buy.
Less Food
Losing 70 lbs. has been a journey of exploring my relationship with food. In days of fatness, I ate because everyone else was eating, I ate because I was bored or stressed out and needed the comfort of food, I ate because I didn’t want to confront my health issues, I ate because it was one of the only ways I knew of finding pleasure.
