Each Step Counts

For breakfast this morning, I ate homemade cereal that I’d prepared on Sunday, along with some hemp milk. I’m working to introduce more whole foods into my diet (particularly raw, unprocessed ones). I find that the more whole foods I eat, the better I feel. I meet my need for food and nourishment.

When I’ve tried to make changes to my life, I’ve followed the same pattern: make a discovery about a new way of interacting with the world, consume all I can around said discovery, implement changes immediately and with gusto! That usually lasts nine to twelve days before I default make to my old habits. The new changes are hard to sustain.

Today for dinner, I had two slices of pizza. I haven’t been eating much cheese (or wheat)—I function when I fuel my body with other types of food—but for some reason, I had a hankering for pizza. I could have resisted. I could have snacked on some veggies, or ate leftover chili (which I also had for lunch), or prepared something else. What about tomorrow? How long can I sustain a cold turkey approach to changes?

Three years ago, I presented a workshop at the Northeast LGBT Conference. The keynote speaker talked about being a former smoker and how, before quitting, she was smoking 60 cigarettes per day. As she was trying to quit, there were days (frequently, in the beginning) when she would still smoke. Rather than beat herself up for having a cigarette, she would think “Today, I did not smoke 59 cigarettes.”

Today, 80% of my food was unprocessed.

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When I think about the systems that operate in the world: capitalism, imperialism, classism, racism, sexism, straight supremacy, transphobia—the list could go on—it is easy for me to become overwhelmed. How can I possibly change the whole world? I can’t. But I can change myself.  And every day I can make more and more changes and positive choices.

There’s no excuse for injustice. And too often “incremental change” is citing as a reason for delaying (often inevitably) true justice. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said.

So I can never be complacent in my incremental changes (especially when I benefit and others are marginalized because of my actions or inactions), but I can be kind to myself. I can recognize that changing entrenched habits is difficult work.

And I can commit every day to taking one step forward.

Photo by David Goehring