Well, now that my weight loss and exercise plan is firmly back on track, I can’t help but hope that THIS time I will stick to it. It’s been a couple years now that I’ve been trying to lose weight; once I even made some good progress. But I have a nasty habit of falling off the wagon. I’m human, after all. Here’s the problem: I’m a black-and-white thinker when it comes to my body. When I miss one workout, or eat something I shouldn’t, I toss in the towel, call it quits, and kick my own ass for not having enough will power. Of course, we all know living healthy isn’t about will power. It’s about taking choices as they come, and trying to make good ones more often than not. It’s not about being perfect 100% of the time. To expect that of anyone is almost cruel.
But I understand that now and I have a whole army of people backing me up this go-around, so now it’s time to tackle the excuses I use to justify many of my less-than-heathy decisions. Some of these excuses even masquerade as supportive statements. My favorite one is this:
I should only make changes that I know I will stick to for a life time, even after I reach my healthy weight.
This made sense to me for a long time, and my friends and I toss this excuse around frequently. But when I repeated this statement to a friend in a casual conversation, he responded with a chuckle and a shake of his head. Then he said, “Can’t you see that the things you have committed to haven’t gotten you to where you want to go?”
He’s right, of course, in more ways than he probably knows! He pointed out that although my running is an admirable effort, it’s not really changing my body the way I want it to. This is certainly NOT an excuse to stop running because it clearly does contribute to meeting other personal goals--increased energy, personal time, more time outdoors. And besides that, I enjoy it!
But what it does mean is that I need to introduce other activities and different eating strategies into my life that my body does respond to. And I need to give them all a good, fair chance before I simply dismiss it with my favorite excuse: “I’ll never keep this up!”. Thinking about running again, I HATED it for the first two months. It was only the money I paid for the course that kept me at it! Then one day, I just loved it. Who’s to say that won’t happen with other forms of exercise or nutritional suggestions?
I’ve got a doctor, a nutritionist and a personal trainer on my team, and we’re all committed to finding out what my body needs to be healthy. And I’ve promised myself I will give all of their recommendations a fair chance.
Does this mean I won’t complain when Alex, my trainer, makes me do burpees? Hell, no! He will get my look of death every time he asks, but I will still do them!
