Okay. I’ve been on a diet for twenty-four hours and my thighs still rub together when I walk. What the actual hell? If only deciding to take care of yourself produced immediate results. Alas, this is not the instant gratification station. This is the work hard, be consistent, make good choices station. This is the chocolate cake makes your ass bigger not smaller channel. This is planet earth.

I know. I hate it too.

I’m grousing, but the changes I’ve made in the last twenty-four hours truly haven’t sucked. Last night before blogging I went to the grocery store for snacks, fruits, vegetables, and protein, then went to the gym with my dad after. “Are we going to do this every night?” he said.

“What about every other night?” I replied.

Every other night seems like a reasonable goal, one I could achieve instead of overachieve. What’s the saying? Set yourself up for success.

Today I’ve eaten three reasonable meals–no bread, no refined sugar, no alcohol. After each meal I felt full but not stuffed. What’s this feeling of non-expansion? I thought. In terms of exercise, this morning I mowed a lawn. Tonight I went for a twenty-minute walk. And whereas I used to think a walk didn’t count unless it was at least an hour and uphill all the way, tonight I thought, Twenty minutes is twenty minutes. I mean, I broke a sweat.

What’s nice about all the changes I’m making this week–and I admit they’re a bit “all at once”–is that none of them are new. Like, I’ve eaten mostly paleo before, I’ve been a gym rat before, and I’ve gone on walks before. This means that with little resistance I can slip into these routines like an old shoe. The part of my mind that loves carbs kicks up a bit of a fuss, of course, but most of me is like, Oh yeah, we know how to do this.

All this being said, the one thing I’m doing that I haven’t done before is intermittent fasting, which basically amounts to not eating between 8 PM and noon the next day. Eat however many meals you want (within reason) between noon and eight, but then zip your lips for sixteen hours. The idea (behind any type of fast) is that it not only gives your body a break (because digestion takes a lot of work), but it also allows your body to burn fat for fuel instead of all that pizza and ice cream you’ve been chunking down your throat. (Or is that just me?) Anyway, a friend of mine has been raving about it–they’ve lost fifteen pounds in the last six to eight weeks–so I figured, What the hell? I’ll give it a shot.

Now, I realize I’ve only been at this one day, but so far I like it. Sure, last night was rough. Two hours after having a smoothie at 7:30, I was starving. I went to bed hungry. Boo-hoo. But I told myself, If I’m starving in the morning, I’ll eat. Surely a little fast is better than no fast at all. But get this shit. When I woke up at nine this morning, I was fine. Not really hungry at all. So I skipped breakfast and went to work. Well, I had a cup of hot tea (non-caloric beverages are allowed.) Y’all, I mowed and weedeated in the hot sun for two hours and was fine. What’s more, I actually had an excess of energy (an excess of fat, boo-hoo). Now, was I READY to eat when the clock struck twelve? You bet your sweet bippy. But in my head I’d made it out to be this awful thing–I can’t eat for 16 hours, somebody get me a cross to hang on!–and yet it wasn’t awful at all. It simply wasn’t.

When I got home from mowing today I took my shoes off and banged them together to shake off the grass and dirt. As I did, I noticed a small rock–a large pebble–dislodged itself from the grooves in one of my shoes and landed in my parents’ flowerbed. And maybe this is weird, but I thought about that rock as if it were a teeny-tiny person. Like, it’d probably been hanging out in Fort Smith in my client’s driveway for years, and then all of a sudden got swooped up and transported to Van Buren. Just like that.

Along the same lines, get this. This evening I taught a dance lesson to a couple about to be married. The guy was born in another country, came to the United States, bounced around a bit, and finally met his fiancee up north. Then he got a job down here, and kind of like my shoe picked up that rock and brought it across the Arkansas River, he picked up his fiancee and brought her here too. Through a strange series of events, they ended up on my dance floor. After all these years, we finally met.

I really am astounded by this. How a rock or a person can hang out in one mental, emotional, or physical place and then–bam, like that–be transported to another. Is there work involved? Of course. There’s always work involved. In terms of bodily transformations, you gotta do shit. God’s not gonna strike you skinny. (Although, I guess, you could get one of those awful stomach viruses). In terms of personal growth, you gotta do shit. (My suggestion: see a therapist.) But my point is that at some point there’s a tipping point. (That’s a lot of points, I know.) This is why people say things can turn on a dime. Sooner or later, your hard work, your patience, pays off. Sooner or later, you see results.