I've been taking a poll on this blog to find out what challenges us most about the weight loss journey. All of the challenges I've listed come from personal experience, and I don't think I'm alone. No matter if you're just getting started, have started and stopped, getting back in the game, or in the thick of the battle, we all face these challenges. I'm no expert and my journey is far from over, but I've been at this long enough now to have a little experience with the hurdles that come along. I'd love to say that it gets easier once you've been fighting the fight for a while, but these trials tend to come in like the tide every so often to test us. But the good news is that getting through them is not impossible..you just have to know them for what they are and then you can be prepared to overcome them.
So, tonight I'll tell you what I know about the challenge of finding the motivation to stay going. We've all been there: starting out fresh on a weight loss journey, pumped and ready to go. We are raring to go, we jump in with both feet into working out and new food plan, the first week is challenging but then a good number on the scale puts a fire in our spirit and we're ready for more. The weight starts coming off, we hit our stride in the gym, we start to feel better, people start noticing a change, we become hooked on that workout high, we get some new gym shoes, our energy level goes up, we feel strong, we sleep better, there's a pep in our step - and then BAM! Something happens to throw us off our path. It could come in many forms: an event like Thanksgiving or Christmas when we just can't seem to resist the seasonal treats, a hard and stressful situation that sends us running for the chocolate or a bag of Doritos, or it could be the weeks and weeks of fighting our basest urges with food and sweating it out in the gym only to face an unforgiving scale that either stays stubbornly the same or worse, goes up.
I've chosen to address this challenge first because it's close to home with me right now. My program ended a month ago and the scale hasn't moved up or down. Without my trainers to be accountable to, I've let the food slip a little bit and I struggle with pushing myself the way they did. My team mates and I have had different, demanding work schedules so we haven't been able to work out together and motivate each other in the gym as often as we'd like. Not to mention the various assorted and sundry injuries I've had lately that make workouts more challenging. Just writing this now makes me start to panic a little bit about how things were in my program and how they're not now.
But, what I realized today was that I am in a period of testing. Left to my own devices, I now must face this challenge to keep myself motivated. Do I let my old behaviors take me out of the game or do I reach down deep inside and prove to myself that I can do this on my own? Do I pass or fail the test?
The motivation to keep going doesn't come easy. My friend Debbie has a great saying, "weight follows behavior, just not right away." Basically this means that if you keep doing what you know is the right thing to do, eventually the weight will come off. This doesn't mean you have to be perfect every day. This just means that you have to show up. You don't have to have the best workout of your life every time, you just have to move your body and know that every step taken, whether its a walk around your neighborhood or a rotation of the elliptical machine, is a step in the right direction. The pain and struggle of working towards your healthy goal is so much better than the pain of feeling unhealthy any day. I read somewhere (and the author of the quote was not known): "Losing weight is hard. Maintaining weight is hard. Being fat is hard. Choose your hard."
This week I chose my hard. I put myself back on my plan of eating whole foods and I showed up at the gym every day to do anything I could, strained foot and pulled quad and all. I trust that my weight will follow my behavior, even if it's not right away. My motivation this time around is to prove that I've conquered that old bad part of myself that got me into the place that I was, so I say this: whatever you need to grasp onto, use it. It might be fear, as in my case, or it might be a special event or a health scare or the need to feel better to keep up with the people in your life. Whatever it is, use it. And choose your hard.
No comments:
Post a Comment