I Didn't Want to Write This Post

I almost didn't write this post.  In fact, I've been contemplating it, writing it, erasing it, shaking my head and writing it again.  No one likes to admit defeat...least of all me.  I like to bee bop along in my positive bubble where my workouts are always great and the scale is ever my friend.  I don't want to admit that sometimes the scale doesn't always go down and sometimes it goes up and some times I feel tired and some times I feel like I really can't do this at all.   I don't want to admit these things because these are the things I fear.  I fear that slip in judgement now and again because I'm so totally terrified of going back to my old ways...like it's some inevitable black hole that churns out there, waiting to swallow me in.  I hold myself to the insane standards of your typical Type A, carrying on a mental battle of the rule of 100%...either I'm all in, or I'm all out.  Either I'm eating perfect every day, or I'm eating bad every day. 

It is with this mindset that I approached the scale today for the baseline weigh-in for our new challenge.  There was the same scale that exalted me to new heights several months ago, and there was my trainer with his pen and paper ready to record what I knew was not going to make me happy.  I wasn't the only one of us "veterans" that felt this way.  When our program ended, those of us still at it today did great with our workouts, even going above and beyond the things we did in the program, but we got disorganized about our weigh-ins, some of us stopping weighing in all together and while it's liberating to concentrate on fitness rather than being a slave to that box in the corner of the gym that flashes up numbers that can make or break you, you have to have accountability too. In my case, we've had a couple of months of really awesome weekends and while I've been pushing harder than ever in the gym, I've let myself have too good of a time with what I eat.

So...the scale was up a little bit, and I spent the rest of the afternoon kicking myself, doubting myself, and generally feeling hateful in my own skin.  Then, because it plays 50 times an hour, the Gym Class Heroes song "The Fighter" came on the radio and I started listening to the lyrics.  I started thinking about Rocky, one of my favorite movie characters, and how many times he took a beat down and got back up.  He might have been staggering, bloody, and drunkenly calling "Adrian" but he went the distance...even in the last Rocky movie where he tells his son, "It ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."   Then I thought about the advice I'd give anyone in the same situation which is: shake it off, do better, and keep going.  After all, how silly is it of me to expect perfection out of myself?  How idiotic to think things are 100% one way or the other? I'd never judge someone else against those parameters, so why was I doing that to myself?  Isn't it that kind of thinking that always held me back in the past?  Isn't that why I was never successful at this before?  Aren't I the one who sets my own destiny not some loop of the same old thing?  Isn't the "new" me the real me and the old me a thing of the past? 

So I didn't want to write this post but it's helped me to discard a temporary "defeat" and move forward.  It's helped me realize a destructive pattern in myself so that I will not be doomed to repeat it.  So I thought, maybe it might help someone else.   I had my little "vacation" from the scale and now it's time to "straighten up and fly right" as my Mema likes to say.  It's renewed my fight.  Here's some lyrics:

The Fighter, Gym Class Heroes:
Until the referee rings the bell
Until both your eyes start to swell
Until the crowd goes home
What we gonna do ya'll?

Give em hell, turn their heads
Gonna live life til we're dead.
Give me scars, give me pain
Then they'll say to me, say to me, say to me
There goes a fighter, there goes a fighter
Here comes a fighter
That's what they'll say to me, say to me
Say to me, this one's a fighter.