The Irony of Reaching Your ‘Perfect Health’ Goals

Lessons from the changing seasons on the key to taking care of your health

Kaki Okumura
Forge
Published in
3 min readMar 11, 2022

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Illustrations by Kaki Okumura

When we try to adhere to strict health goals– such as a certain weight or waist measurement– we often find ourselves particularly struggling with the idea of having to maintain it.

We work hard to reach our health goals, and the irony is that the harder we work to grasp onto the progress we have made, the more engulfed in the anxiety and fear that we may ‘slip back’ we become. This makes us tired of taking care of our health, sometimes tired enough to make us want to give up.

But we don’t need to feel like we are held prisoner by our own bodies, a freedom we can find when we understand change not as something to fear, but something we can accept.

One of the cornerstones of Japanese Zen Buddhism is the idea of accepting impermanence, that nothing in our lives can be grasped or held onto– the good, the bad, the exciting, and the boring.

Everything is constantly changing whether we seek it or not, and we only need to pay attention to the changing seasons to understand why…

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Kaki Okumura
Forge
Writer for

Born in Dallas, raised in New York and Tokyo. I care about helping others learn to live a better, healthier life. My site: www.kakikata.space 🌱