When did that shift happen? As children most of us were told that quitting wasn’t an option, if you start something, you finish it. As parents, many of us are echoing the same sentiment to our children; we want them to honor their commitments to their school work, their teammates, to THEMSELVES…
When did living in disconnect become ok?
Seeing people come and go over the last eight years opened my eyes to a few very strong patterns. As we come into a new year (a new century!) I know there will be a big push for women all over to lose the weight, change their habits,
and be that women they imagine they will wake up as on that magical Monday morning when they finally get their shit together… I hope these will help you keep focus this time.
(If you are a past New York Sport and Fitness member, I am not talking about you, but if you think I am talking about you…)
Reasons you can’t stick with it;
You have destination paralysis. Weight loss isn’t a vacation, so why are you turning it into one?
“I will be happy when I lose 20 pounds!” Ok Susan, well what happens when you lose 19 pounds? You still miserable?
There is no end game with weight loss. There is no magic number. What you weighed in high school, when you got married, BEFORE BABIES are snapshots in time, NOT goal markers of where your life should be lived. I spilled enough of my guts to you last week about my past, I am trying to keep myself out of this one but I will say almost ALL of my horrible behaviors came from an idea that a number on a scale would set me free… how stupid is that.
Y’all; do you get pissed when you try on shoes? Does wearing a size 9 make you mad? Do you try to shove yourself into an 8 because smaller is better? NO. You accept that is your shoe size and you find the cutest (or if you’re me, most comfortable shoe) and move on!
Why is our weight and pant size so different?
Your weight is not a destination. It is not somewhere you go to be happy. You don’t plan a trip to Italy, be a miserable bitch until you step on that plane, live your best life for two weeks eating pasta and drinking wine- cause you finally got to Italy! And then board that plane back home, walk off of it into your new bloated reality even more salty and pissy then when you left because now you went to Italy, you know what is like but you can’t live there… so f*ck it. Might as well ruin your beautiful life here….
But that’s exactly what you do.
(No lie, sometimes my analogies are so good I pat myself on the back) (This is one of those times) BECAUSE THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS!!!
You kill yourself losing 20 pounds, (or 3, or 5, or 19….), you hit that weight, you are so happy that you finally did it, and two days later it is gone. You celebrated your weight with (gasp)
some pizza and you woke up 2 pounds heavier. All that work down the toilet and your back to your old ways within three weeks.
Your weight is not a destination. You can’t go there and stay there. Your weight is a river. It is ever changing, affected by so many variables that you couldn’t possibly control and micro manage to stay there.
Even if you step into that river HIGHLY committed to sticking with the current, staying with the exact water you stepped in, equipped with a life jacket, a boat, all the tools you think you need you STILL could not stay with that water you walked into.
Let your goal weight go. Let it float by. You have NO IDEA what your perfect weight is, if you are working with a trainer who is telling you what your goal weight is run away from them. A perfect weight does not exist, you will be defeated each time you reach it and then lose it and you will damage your metabolism in the process but that is a whole other post…
Reframe: I do not have a perfect weight. I love and accept myself at all sizes.
My goal is to treat myself with extreme kindness, move because I honor my body
(which is an actual gift from God so stop being lazy and use it!) and I will eat like I give a shit about my health and future.
Which brings me to the next reason people seem to fail, and subsequently quit over and over again; you are measuring your progress all wrong.
See above. If your main barometer to measure your progress is the scale you are shooting yourself in the foot.
The scale tells one side of a story that has 454168 sides (exact number). I am not saying you can’t use it, but I am saying that isn’t the only thing you should use. We could do a deep dive on why the scale is total shit, because you could simply take shit and lose weight, and I am fully aware there can be a pretty strong argument to use the scale, but I still believe it is a pointless piece of plastic that the vast majority
of us do not need to use nearly as much as we are.
What you should be doing:
start tracking your habits like you track your weight.
The scale is going to move. And then it will stay the same, and go down, and go back up, and go down again, and go up again forever and ever amen.
Track your habits. You can control those, and in doing so can create some serious change.
Track your sleep, track your movement, track how often you are eating veggies, and track the weight you are using at the gym.
Be consistent. Stop looking for a magic number and START looking for patterns. Where are you falling off? What can you do better?
What can you ADD IN to ADD health to your life?
Track that. Track anything you know would help move you towards your goal… but…
Don’t go ham.
You have a goal, you’re ready to go, 6 days a week, no carbs, 1200 calories a day, #ketoforlife,
Stop right now. There is a time and a place for a push, but the push shouldn’t kill you. It should TEACH you. No one learns from dieting and if you’re simply killing yourself with cardio your body will just get really good at cardio – so congratulations, you get to do more cardio…
When you push hard with no end game but a number on a scale you either burn out before you see that number OR you see the number and burn out because what you’re doing is not sustainable.
You learn from experimenting,
you learn from treating your body kindly and listening closely to how it responds to what you put into it AND how you move it.
Go into anything with an open mind and NOT married to any one way. You may find a few weeks in that what you are doing is not for you at all, that is FINE! Learn and move on. What works for me may be your downfall. There is no right or wrong way, do not let their hammer be your nail!
Go into something as an experiment, never a diet. What will I learn if I cut out sugar for a few weeks? What will happen to my sleep if I stop eating after dinner? How will my body respond if I start strength training a few days a week?
And lastly, stop lying to yourself.
You are not that busy. You have a few extra dollars to pay for TOOLS to help improve your life.
The truth is you are looking for progress in the wrong places and you are unwilling to hold yourself accountable.
Change is a commitment. It is a process, it has ups and downs
and if you think you’re going to overhaul your life and the habits that brought you to this point in 3 months you’re insane. The main reason people aren’t seeing progress is because we have accepted that is ok to take an easy out, to quit.
We make ourselves feel better about it by talking about how busy we are, which I call bullshit on almost all the time. Some of the most successful people I see (in the gym) are the busiest. They don’t have time, THEY MAKE TIME.
Hiding behind your kid’s soccer practice isn’t noble, it is a cop out and you deserve better.
No money? Really? Your Target receipt and those two for ones you had at Chili’s last week said different. It isn’t a lack of money in most cases; it is a lack of commitment to your goal. If I told everyone who quit over lack of money that I had a pill for them to take that would help them lose 20 pounds in 30 days I would be 100% would find the money.
Before you get pissy with me understand I don’t say that from a high horse, I say it because I lived it, and I know how completely shitty it feels to live in that disconnect. In the uncomfortable comfort of your bullshit that is allowing you to gently tip toe further and further away from your goals,
from your health, from you living a life that you deserve to live.
It is easy to stand behind a “busy” schedule and a budget that has money for dinner and drinks but not for proactive health care,
it is scary to admit you have some work to do and the idea of doing it seems overwhelming.
That is why we circle back around, starting with a really simple goal; to treat yourself with kindness, to experiment with different forms of self love and simply see what happens if you don’t give up on YOU.
January is six weeks away, six weeks to plan on how you can make this year different. Six weeks to try on what would happen if you committed to putting aside your bullshit and stepping into the idea that progress can be measured in what is
GAINED instead slaving to the notion your only successful in a loss.