Dear Body, I’m Sorry!
I’m sorry for how I have mistreated you over the years. I am sorry for sometimes starving you. I am sorry for sometimes overfeeding you. I am very sorry for feeding you so such garbage in the form of junk food on so many late night trips through the drive thru. I am sorry for not allowing you the proper amount of sleep to recover and repair when you needed it the most. I am really sorry for drinking as much as I did back in the day (yep I went through a phase…I was a bartender for a lot of years so it kind of came with the territory.) I am mostly sorry I didn’t wise up sooner to how incredible you are, how much you are constantly doing to keep me healthy and happy and how with just a little bit of TLC we could both have been not just surviving one day to the next, but actually thriving.
While I am abundantly sorry for all the mistakes I made, the indifference I showed, and the harm I caused my body by treating it like garbage for so many years, I am very thankful I finally wised up and realized what a true blessing good health is and how important it is to do everything in my power to protect it. I have spent the last two years essentially atoning for my past bodily sins and one thing I can happily report is that it truly is possible to turn your health and your life around with a few simple mindset shifts. Having spent the last two years trying to get myself healthy and in shape, making mistakes, trying and failing several times, and then finally finding the right combination of diet and exercise that has worked for me, I wanted to dive a little deeper into a few lessons I have picked up along the way. Some of them were pretty easy to absorb, some of them took me a while, but I hope that the more I share my story the easier it may become for someone else just beginning to write their own…so here goes:
Changes are happening even when you can’t see them.
And one day you will wake up and look in the mirror and you all of a sudden you will be blown away at the progress you have made. That’s exactly what happened to me. I was consistently working out for about 8 or so months, not seeing a whole lot of outward change but my energy levels were up, I was feeling more confident, my anxiety was down, but yet I was still pretty bummed I couldn’t see a real outward difference. Then all of a sudden one day it was like BOOM, you have muscles! And I mean muscles I had never seen before or ever thought I would ever in a million years have, especially at my age. The tricky part was showing up all those days before that happened when I wasn’t seeing any meaningful changes taking place despite feeling like I was doing everything in my power to bring them about.
The changes are happening you guys, trust me! And don’t always rely on the scale to tell you they are happening either. Keep in mind that muscle weighs more than fat so the number on the scale might not be going down dramatically for big changes to be occurring in the background. Stay consistent, use that dedication on the days your motivation is lacking, and show up for yourself enough times that one day you get to that OMG moment as well. As soon as I had mine, that was it. I was hooked and started setting even bigger and better goals for myself. I stuck with it long to see the results of my hard work start to show and I am so thankful to myself for that to this day.
It isn’t about what you do occasionally, it’s about what you do consistently.
One less than healthy meal isn’t going to derail your progress. Several days of unhealthy eating isn’t even going to derail your progress. Now six months of unhealthy eating probably will. The same goes for working out. You don’t have to workout like a crazy person for hours on end every single day for six months straight. To be honest, you shouldn’t do that! You will end up not only potentially burning out but most likely injuring yourself along the way. Now the opposite of that, working out like once a month for 15 minutes and wondering why you aren’t seeing results also applies to this principle.
Seeing results comes about by taking smalls steps every single day toward the goals you have set. Getting and staying healthy is more like a marathon than a sprint. And to be completely honest it is a marathon that really has no end if you want to achieve and maintain optimum health for a lifetime. Find the joy in the everyday. Find a workout program or regimen that keeps you wanting to come back for more and a meal plan that is healthy enough that you are fueling your body correctly most of the time and indulging enough that you don’t feel deprived some of the time as well.
Real, meaningful change happens outside your comfort zone.
Nothing could have exemplified this more than the experience I had finding out how much I love Barre style workouts. I fell in love with this type of workout purely on accident after initially thinking they were not at all for me. I stepped out of my comfort zone, tried something new, and am totally hooked now, not to mention after having just completed an 8 week Barre workout program, I am noticeably leaner, have some serious calf muscles and my butt is looking pretty good too if I might say so myself! Trying a new style of workout was exactly what my body needed in order to jump start new changes. I had been really focused on lifting weights and doing HIIT style workouts for almost a year and while I got great results, I had started to plateau because I needed to mix things up. Enter Barre and my body responded fabulously and I am having a blast doing it.
The moral of this story is nothing changes if nothing changes. Switch things up, try something new, get uncomfortable from time to time and I bet you find something you love as much as I love prancing around my living room pretending to be a ballerina all while sweating and burning serious calories. It isn’t the prettiest of sights, me trying to do ballet, but I had so much fun doing it the first time, I restarted the program two weeks ago because I was that hooked…also I am literally in my living room so no one can see me making a fool of myself which helps and you’re welcome for sparring you all that sight!
An All or Nothing Mentality= Recipe for Nothing!
Being disciplined is one thing, being obsessive is another. I will admit, I struggle with this sometimes. Not so much in the food/nutrition aspect of living a healthy lifestyle cause your girl definitely likes her tacos, pasta, and ice cream, but when it comes to the working out part, I have to watch myself. I got to a point about a year into my new lifestyle where I was enjoying working out so much that I was finding myself skipping rest days. Like skipping them weeks on end and getting dangerously close to overtraining and risking serious injury. Luckily, I realized the error of my ways in time, mostly because my body was screaming at me to stop, but nonetheless I learned my lesson.
In order to prevent this from happening again, if a rest day comes along and I still feel like being active I allow myself to take a walk, not run, but a walk outside or a bike ride or more recently I have taken up doing yoga just to stretch everything back out. The real lesson here is that balance is the name of the game. Find a happy medium where you are working out and eating right enough to see results but not so much that it is too much for your body and honestly your mind to maintain. Avoid the burnout, rest when you need to, indulge in that cheat meal when you feel like you need it and most of all enjoy the whole dang process!
Everyone has their own path to travel on the road to health and wellness but there are definitely some universal truths that can make that path much less bumpy if absorbed early on. It will never be downright easy. Heck, most of the time it will be just the opposite but what is so amazing about the struggle is the feeling of accomplishment you get when you work through it, overcome it and achieve what you set your mind to. It is never too late to change your life or take control of your body and mind. As someone who used to treat my body like the enemy, take it from me, all it takes is some consistent self-love and a healthy dose of commitment and you can completely transform just about anything you want to. I work with my body now. I listen to it. I honor it and most importantly I do everything in my power to keep it as happy and healthy as it is working to keep me!
