Fallen, And I Got Back Up

I fell off my wagon last week, and I had to spend a few days realizing that this small setback was just an event. As you all know I use the 75hard mental resilience program to keep my life on track. There are, at the moment, four phases that progressively add a little bit more “pain” to your daily accomplishments.

For example, the prerequisite phase has you drink a gallon of water daily, take a daily progress picture, follow a diet of your choice, read daily 10 pages of a non-fiction book, and perform two, 45 minute workouts a day, and one has to be outside. The next phases have you do all of the previous phases tasks and adds new ones to the list of daily accomplishes.

Oh…and if you fail to do any of the tasks on a given day before you go to bed that night, you start over at the beginning.

Trying to keep myself accountable to the program and to add a bit more pain to the already painful program, I added that if I didn’t see progress toward one of my goals in a two week period I would start the phase over again.

Two weeks into Phase one of 75hard, I had two weigh-ins that didn’t budge in either direction. For some, this would not be a real big deal, but for me making that kind of compromise was not an option. I put into my program a 2 week weigh-in rule because I figure there can be a week where I eat all the right things, but may have ate a bit much; not exactly a habit that is going to cause great catastrophic results in the wrong direction in the short time.

Two weeks with zero results? — to hell with that! I’m doing something wrong and it needs some serious evaluation and regrouping tactics.

I felt I had to re-evaluate what I was doing different from the first 75 days that I managed to lose 2–4 pounds every week. I know I can lose another 30 pounds so I am quite sure I haven’t hit a plateau, and I also only took two days “off” where I worked in a few cheats — by design — before I started Phase 1 of the program.

So what changed? I stopped writing what I ate in my food journal. I don’t necessarily keep track of calories, but I have been in the biz long enough to have a general idea of what and how much to eat. But, just in case you want an idea of what I do, I eat from four simple macro groups. Four?? what the hell are you talking about? Protein, Carbohydrates, Fats, and Vegetables. Yes, I know that Vegetables are usually considered a Carbohydrate, but I like to separate them because most veggies aren’t carbohydrate crazy, and I’m not doin the Keto fad. Long story short, plain and simple…I was over eating processed carbs — bread, soda crackers, peanut butter, pasta, etc. — like a fool once I sat down and refocused on what was missing from my routine.

I always stop eating after 8a, and I do not push food to face until around 11a-12p. When I eat usually depends on my scheduled events and how I feel. I usually keep at least 3–4 hours of time in between meals and IF I snack its 100% unprocessed food. Once again, I slacked on paying attention to when I was eating and how often.

So basically, I compromised for a day or two, and that started a downward spiral of old habits to trickle in.

If you want to succeed you have to set up rules and stick to them. If I didn’t put in place my 2 week no results rule, I would have kept compromising. Once you start compromising, you’ll keep compromising, again and again and again.

Our brain and body are like little toddler’s — they want what they want, and they want it right now! So you have to treat them like toddlers, and set up rules. When the rules are compromised you better pay attention because the toddler in you is going to take a mile! You will tame your little two year old’s in time. It just takes patience and a whole lot of consistency.

Until later…”Take It Up a Notch”