A couple of things I’ve learned about myself on this journey –
1. Calorie counting does NOT work for me. I’m a right brain kind of gal and dealing with too many numbers drives me crazy. I obsess over them and then lose confidence when I can’t keep track.
2. What worked once, won’t necessarily work again. For example, the last time I lost weight I weighed myself every day. This worked because the dropping numbers were “proof” of my hard work even when my reflection in the mirror didn’t show. However, this time around I have too much going on and the daily weigh-in only adds to my stress. I can’t keep holding on and hoping that it’ll help just because it did once, I have to know when to let go and try another method.
3. Daily blog journals do NOT work for me. I’m not a very verbose person by nature – some days more than others. I admire those people who can take pictures of everything they eat every day and still have stuff to talk about every.single.day. I find that when I try to do that, I end up boring *myself*.
4. Do NOT treat this as the main focus of your life. It seems for most things in my life, I am the derailing factor. When I put this health and fitness thing at the forefront, I start to obsess over it and beat myself up for every little mistake or every little guilty thought. I think I need to put *living well* at the forefront and attach a healthy lifestyle as part of it. I find that when I can step back and focus on living a happy life instead of trying to micromanage my goals, I stay focused longer and am better able to achieve those goals.
5. Daily exercise – It’s strange. It takes forever (in this case, an entire year) for me to get my lazy butt to the gym on a daily basis, but once I get going for a month, then I’m pretty good about going consistently. The key though is for that first month I have to live without interruptions and to not have any stress factors. For some reason I’m so sensitive that first month that any little thing can send me spiraling back down the wrong track. But once I get past that first month hurdle, I always feel so great about myself that I end up surpassing all of my later obstacles. *sigh*I’m not sure how to overcome this one. I guess as the saying goes, you just have to keep trying again and again….and again and again.
6. Writing – For me, this is something that’s hard to talk about in RL. So rather then make this a daily ‘log” journal, I’m just going to use it to record all the thoughts/ramblings and worries I have running around in my head with no place to express it.
After so many failures, sometimes it’s real tempting to give up. However, a little voice inside of me tells me that I actually really want this. The energy and confidence that I had before is too precious for me to not want to fight more for it. I know I will succeed. When - I’m not sure. I guess if you keep walking, even if it’s only one fraction of a step at a time…eventually you’ll get somewhere right?