Embracing Lifestyle Change

Here we go again.  Time to get moving in the right direction again.  I went to a new doctor yesterday and got weighed (far from my favorite experience).  I found out what the fit of my belt had already told me, I'm not making progress in the right direction weight-wise.  I know why: too busy to exercise, too much eating out for convenience sake, and my old enemy: portion size control.
I have been fighting this battle, often losing this battle, since I was nine years old.  My new doctor said he had three words for me: "embrace lifestyle change."
Yep.
Got that doc.
I know all about it, I've been managing diabetes by diet for over three years.  I learned to drop the sugar and count the carbohydrates.  I'm all up in that.
But it's not working right now, because I have lost focus, my discipline slacked off.
I need to get back to counting and being more careful.  I need to re-evaluate my relationship with food... again.
Change is hard.
It's no wonder that we humans seem so unable to really change in order to address our most basic troubles on a societal level.  It's really difficult for me to control what I put in my pie hole on a long term basis.  No wonder we still have poverty and crime and violence of all shapes and sizes.
Sometimes I wish I was one of those people who could just eat pretty much anything they wanted and stay thin, but I have never even known what that was like.  My relationship with food has been out of whack for over three decades.
Sometimes I wish people would just treat each other better and care for the common good a little bit more than they do, but the world has never known what that was like.  Our relationships with each other have been out of whack as long as anyone can remember.
Meaningful change means work.
Entropy is a thing.
Entropy means that the level of chaos in a system tends to increase without some investment of energy in to counteract it.  Simply pouring energy into a system, is actually going to increase entropy in the long run, the energy that counteracts entropy must have some intention to it.
Take my kids rooms as an example.  Every so often we spend some time cleaning up.  Michele and I must provide the intention and continually refocus Jack and Cate or else they start playing instead of cleaning and the entropy (level of messiness) actually tends to increase.  Eventually, by a combination of their physical action and the will of their parents, their rooms actually attain the look of orderliness.
But it doesn't last, as soon as they introduce other sorts of energy into the room, entropy begins to win the battle again, and intention must be applied in order to counter-act entropy.
This happens on the atomic, molecular, cellular, organismic, ecological, geological and cosmic levels.  (Aside: organismic is a fun word to say)
In short, the dynamic relationship between chaos and order is built into the universe.  It is active in the birth and death of stars and in the vacillations of my waistline, and we have been given agency to act within this framework.
That means I need to eat less and exercise more in order to be healthy.
It also means that we need to treat others with grace and compassion the way that Jesus told us if we ever want to change the world.
Somehow it always comes back to that doesn't it?