It’s spring or at least faux spring. Each year we get a little tease of spring and summer in March. I’ve been taking advantage of the weather and wearing my flip flops. March 21st was technically the first day of spring and April 1st marked the new lunar cycle. However, I live in the mountains of Colorado. Specifically at 10,300’. Our “spring” is in June for about two weeks and then we have six weeks of summer then fall, warm fall and winter. This morning I woke up to over a foot of snow and tomorrow will be 50 degrees.
Why am I talking about the weather when this is supposed to be about my journey, health, and fitness? Like faux spring, when we first start down the path of being healthy, we get a taste of success and somehow that triggers a thought of “I can relax.” This may cause a slight gain which then leads to the feeling of guilt and finally failure sending us back into winter. At this point, many decide to give up on the rest of the week or month and say, “I’ll start again on Monday.” So begins the wave. The high of an achievement, down to the low of a perceived failure and then climbing back up again.
When I first dove into my journey, I went all in. For the first month, I stuck to a strict no BS meal plan, exercise and gave up all alcohol. Imagine my disappointment week after week when the scale barely budged. It was December and I felt that I had been making a pretty big sacrifice and I expected big results. I began to question what I was doing and that once again I was going to fail. I worried about the money I invested, the perception of others who already doubted what I was doing but most of all I felt like I was falling into the bottom of that wave and planning to crash into the reef. Then, it happened, I had one week where all of it seemed to come together. I had that faux spring moment of success. It was at this moment that I had a choice to make. Relax just a bit and indulge just for a moment or stick to it and see how far I could go.
What was it that kept me going? For the first time, I was realizing what it felt like to be healthy. I had lost 11 pounds and people were starting to notice. My clothes were starting to feel looser. My workouts were becoming easier. Best of all, my sweet hubby pointed out that I had just made it through the toughest time of the year and if I could do that, the rest was going to seem easy. It was this taste of success that drove me to want more and not relax. The thought of slipping back is what drove me to push that much more towards my goal. At the three months mark I was halfway to my goal and at a weight and fitness level I hadn’t been in almost 10 years. At the six-month mark, I had reached a level that I didn’t know was possible and to an extent, I did start to relax.
The difference in this relax moment was how I chose to relax. I didn’t relax on my exercise, and I didn’t relax on what I had determined was the nutrition plan for me. What I did relax on was beating myself up. I began to enjoy a beverage within my plan. I recognized that it was ok for one week to weigh X and the next to be slightly different and it wasn’t a failure. I also stepped back from weighing myself weekly. I instead focused on how my clothes felt and how I looked at myself in the mirror. In the process, I came within two pounds of my goal by the end of that year. I had found my rhythm and while my weight changed frequently within a couple of pounds, I had achieved a level of success for the next year. Then the big kahuna wave came…. aka world shutdown.
When everything shut down, I realized it was going to be a challenge to stay on track both physically and mentally. I was not protected from the weight creep that everyone experienced during this time. My whisky treats were a bit more frequent than my normal and I allowed for work stress to override my exercise time. My gym was closed, and I had to refocus. In that moment I purchased home equipment and I joined online programs to get physically back on track. While I didn’t experience massive weight gain, I did lose a bit of ground, at least according to the scale. However, my strength, endurance and drive continued to improve. I realized I no longer had faux spring moments but instead, a changing of the seasons.
When we are working on ourselves, it’s necessary to ride the waves and move through the seasons of change. We won’t always have it perfect. Instead of looking at weight gains as setbacks, look at it as a sidestep. We are still moving forward but there was a rock in the road or an April snowstorm to move around. Dorothy’s yellow brick road wasn’t a straight line and there were plenty of challenges along the way. The key was she kept moving towards OZ. At the end, she learned she had the power to reach her goal all along within her.
Set your goals, accept the faux spring, put on those flipflops and keep moving forward through the storm. Our goals are our never-ending journey to a better life that we get to create.
Thanks for your time and support. I hope to see you in my May fitness challenge.
Slainte!
Miche
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