Amanda, Meet the Rug.

Now, try to stay on your feet while it gets pulled out from under you…

My life is in complete upheaval right now.  I just started a new job, we jammed all of our stuff in storage, moved out of our house and now we are temporarily staying at my mom’s house to be closer to my work until the company relocates back to the Grand Junction area in September.  Our move took the entire month of March because I couldn’t afford any time off and having a two-year old at home didn’t allow for Sean to get a hell of a lot done during the day.  On top of that, the same week I started my new job, I started teaching a spin class at the gym on Wednesday nights (which I LOVE!), so between that, learning my new position and commuting up and down from Rifle to GJ several times a week to fit it all in, I’m a bit strung out.  We had our final walk-through on the house last Saturday, got our deposit back and in the bank to save for our move back to The Junk in a few months, and now we just have the task of settling in at my mom’s while not making it seem like we’ve completely taken over her home.

 All fine and dandy and insane, except that Sean, who has been steadily looking for employment for the past two years, suddenly received a call on Sunday afternoon about a job he applied for over four months ago.  In Durango.  Not only is the guy extremely interested in Sean, but he is heading down to Durango tomorrow for an interview on Thursday.  He was all but offered the job on the phone, and there is potential for it to morph from a shop foreman job, which is where he’d be starting, into a drafting and detailing position.  This is where that shiny new degree of his will come in handy – finally!  He hasn’t been able to find anything in his field since way before he even graduated and the potential in The Junk had come to a screeching halt, which is why we decided to focus on my job.  Plans to move up weren’t panning out for me in my full-time position at the gym, so I moved on to a company with opportunity for long-term growth and advancement.

Now, we have some hard decisions to make.  We aren’t going to do anything rash until we see how the interview goes, but Sean is pretty excited about this, which means we have to think about our future from all angles.  We have his kids to consider and how often we’ll get to see them.  I have to research what job prospects will look like for me, and whether it’s possible for me to find something that allows me to stay with Isla more, which I would love.  The fact that I’ve just started a great job doesn’t make it easier, though.  The cost of living is more expensive, which means we won’t be able to afford lots of space.  We will be closer to Sean’s family for a change, which would be great – he hasn’t spent more than a few random weekends in Durango in the past 20 years.  We both have friends in the area that we never get to see and I even have some family a few hours away, so it’s not like we would be moving to a place where we don’t know a soul.  Durango is an adorable town and the first time Sean and I visited, I bugged him and bugged him about how much I’d like to live there.  Well, now.  Almost six years later, I may get my chance, whether I’m ready or not.

Oops.  There goes the rug. 

Forced Reflection

Tomorrow is my last day at work for the next two weeks while I’m out recovering from a medical procedure. I’ll be scrambling to get every last detail sorted out so that I can feel comfortable about being gone so long, and then I’ll be scrambling around to figure out what the heck I’m going to do on bed rest for 14 days! Well, it may be more like 10 or so, if I’m feeling particularly healthy and motivated. No matter how great I’ll be feeling, one thing I won’t be doing is working out – FOR SIX WEEKS.

Six weeks?!? This is a nightmare! Working out is the only thing that balances me when I get stressed, when I’m anxious, when I’m nervous and most certainly, when my diet has severely derailed (see previous posts) and I need a calorie-burning Yin to my junk food Yang. I feel like I’m going to be a ship lost at sea, waiting for the lighthouse that won’t be beaming my way into the harbor until New Year’s – just in time for those pesky resolutions. In the meantime, I’m a little freaked out about how I’m going to handle myself. With two weeks of laying around ahead of me, I’ll definitely have some time to figure it all out.

I’ll be sending the next few updates from my makeshift desk of pillows and blankets – stay tuned for all of the excitement!

Briefly…

Every single time I post, it is ridiculously late and my brain is at about a 4% functioning capacity. So I am very quickly posting to say I’m still here, and new posts will be coming shortly after me. Then I’m going to bed because A: my daughter will be up no less than 17 times tonight, I’m sure, and B: I have an early morning swim planned with my friend Molly and falling asleep in the pool will surely hinder my ability to clock in a good workout.

I trained with Bo yesterday and it was so great. I finally conquered the Spider Monkey and was able to clear the whole weight bench this time – FOR ALL THREE SETS – rather than just barely lift off of the floor, like before. I felt pretty fan-freaking-tastic about myself, I have to say. (If you don’t know what the Spider Monkey is, ask Bo – I’m sure he’d love to demonstrate!) Today was our big end-of-the-month push at the gym – a day during which I don’t take lunch and I certainly don’t work out. I need to be available to sign up the masses! However, last night I packed my workout bag, not even thinking about it, and I’m so happy I did! My wonderful friend Casey, who also trains with Bo, had to cancel her session at literally the last second so she called and offered it to me because it was already paid for and she didn’t want it to go to waste. Now I know what I want to be when I grow up: insanely wealthy with unlimited funds to spend on personal training. WHAT A LUXURY it was to train twice in one week!! No wonder we recommend this to members who sign up for PT! It truly, truly makes a difference, and it’s so much more motivating! We did this insanely hard yet fun circuit workout in the GGX room and although I’m pretty sure I will have lost complete function of all leg muscles by tomorrow morning, I was stunned by the difference from training just once a week. As my sessions dwindle down to the last few, it’s hard for me to appreciate what I have left because now I just want more, more, MORE! If I could go three times a week for two months and combine that with the ultimate perfect nutrition efforts, I can only imagine what would happen! ALL THINGS AWESOME, I know that.

For now, I’ll just say I got spoiled this week, and thank you, Casey, for thinking of me! It was truly a great gift, and my motivation is once again right where it should be: going strong. Attitude of gratitude is what I’m sporting today. For my job, for good karma and for good things to come.

Fear

I want better for myself, but I’m too afraid to go after it.

There it is: the ugly truth.

I have spent so much time analyzing what’s going on with me and my weight. I’ve been chasing down possibilities and trying to come up with solutions like a mad woman, and I feel like that’s exactly what I’ve become: mad. Oh yes, definitely angry, but more along the lines of stone cold crazy. That kind of mad. I’ve bounced from diet to pill to shake to juice, and I’ve even considered going gluten free. REALLY, AMANDA?? I’ve had my thyroid checked and scanned, my blood drawn and my hormones tested. I went to my doctor and then went to a different doctor because I didn’t believe my regular guy was getting to the real root of the problem. This type of behavior is beyond ridiculous even for me, and as anyone who knows me can attest, I can be pretty ridiculous. In an endearing way, of course. Wide awake and staring into the darkness, the epiphany came around three a.m. one sleepless night last week: I AM MY OWN PROBLEM. I let fear stand in the way of my own success. Not my thyroid, not my post-pregnancy hormones, and certainly not my extreme hatred for vegetables. It’s all me. No glossing it over, no sugar-coating. Just BOOM: FACT.

I’ve been this way my whole life. I’ve wanted things, I’ve started to go after them, and as soon as the road gets a little rocky, I quit. I don’t even make it to the forks in the road because I’ve already detoured and doubled back. I’ve let the few big hills become my daily little speed bumps and rather than cruise right over them, I take the long way around. The thing that has brought this into focus has been Spin class. I love Spin. Love it! For the past couple of months, I’ve been thinking about becoming an instructor. I’ve talked to Linda about it and she thinks I should do the RPM training in January. Bo thinks I can do it. Sometimes I think my body can do it, even where it is now. It’s my brain that’s having a hard time getting on board. As enthusiastic as I am, I’m scared out of my head. “Who wants to take a fitness class from me? I’m way too big to teach Spin. How could anybody take me seriously?” Negative, negative, negative. The more I want it, the more I talk myself out of it. I don’t know what happens when the groundwork has been laid in your head that makes you think you’re not good enough, but once you’ve received that signal, it’s hard not to keep tuning into it. Even if the only person sending that signal is you.

I deny myself good things. I starve on health because I binge on junk. I kill myself in a workout only to give in to the voice that tells me, “You’ll never be an athlete so have another cookie.” I mangle my good intentions and my well-being suffers. Lately I’ve felt as if I’m fraying around the edges with only a few solid threads holding me together and I’m trying to understand that FOOD ISN’T GONNA FIX IT. It doesn’t pay the bills or take care of the piles of laundry on the couch. It doesn’t spend quality time with my daughter or figure out how we can afford Christmas presents. It most certainly doesn’t take away fear. That I have to figure out on my own. Actually, I have a lot to figure out, but getting rid of the fear is now at the top of the list. Once that happens, I can make way for those good things.

Now, how do I do that? I’m scared.

Crash Site

I fell off the wagon.

Well, I didn’t so much fall off as I cannon-balled off, tangled myself in the wheel spokes and got dragged over the side of the proverbial dieting cliff. Now that the vultures have stopped circling and the dust has settled, I’m trying to piece together my broken pride and get back on this &$*%#^@! wagon ONCE AGAIN. When I mess up, I go big.

First of all, it probably goes without saying that I didn’t finish the juice fast. I made it through Day Seven, which was last Monday, and then I literally could not stomach the thought of another drop of vegetable grossness passing over my lips. Big change in attitude from the way it was going in my last post! I don’t know what happened but when I hit that wall, I just couldn’t keep going. I ate sparingly and fearfully for the next two days, paranoid that the return to actually chewing food would result in immediate weight gain. Then the bomb went off, ignited by the simple consumption of two cookies from Subway last Thursday. In the past five days, I have become the ultimate cautionary tale for what can happen when you let a little sugar hit the system after having been deprived of it for about three weeks (counting my diet before The Great Juice Disaster of 2011). Throw in the added bonus of emotionally charged situations going on in my life recently and unending worry about things that are out of my control, and you have the ultimate environment for breeding fat cells at breakneck speed. Oh, and did I mention my complete omission of workouts during that whole time?

So now I’m aware that I have six weeks left in the 8-Week Challenge. My classic pattern of starting strong and then failing miserably has begun, but I really want to salvage what I can from the wreckage and still create something useful. Because right now what I feel I’ve created is a monster. A sugar-crazed, sad and nearly defeated monster.

Nearly defeated. Not entirely.

I confessed my transgressions to Bo today and yes, there were tears. Couldn’t be helped. Unfortunately, I’m not a cute cryer, so I’m sure that was as painful for Bo as it was for me! I told him that I hoped being back in the gym after a three-day weekend would help shake me up and fumbled my way through my ten-millionth promise that I would do better. Man, I’m so exhausted from sounding like a broken record. On my lunch hour, I made my way to the spin room with my bright and shiny new spin shoes. I have now attempted to wear them in three different classes, and all three times there has been some sort of clip/pedal drama that resulted in me putting back on my tennis shoes for the remainder of class. I decided today that I would attempt to tame both the shoes and the monster. I lost myself in the rhythms of the bike and let go. Let go of all of it. Gave it up to the mural of the Colorado Monument ahead of me, tamed those shoes and forgave myself. I raced, I climbed, I flew.

I reminded myself: I can still fly.

Day Five of Juice

Starting Weight: 203 lbs.

As I’m still learning how to use this blog site, I’m finally figuring out how to post pictures. I thought I’d put up the photo that inspired me to start this journey. It’s from early Spring of this year, and those thighs were a big wake-up call. Also, I forgot to post my beginning stats from Day One of the 8-Week Challenge! I can’t remember my measurements, but my weight was 194, and my body fat was 38.2% (I think). Yikes! The good news is I’m down nine pounds from the start of this blog, so although the progress is MUCH slower than I would prefer, it’s progress nonetheless! Onward…

I’m obsessing about cheeseburgers and Cheez-its! The moment one of those two things pops into my head, which has been constantly the past two days, my salivary glands go into overdrive! Big, fat juicy cheeseburgers on ridiculously thick buns and the salty loveliness of crunching into those little orange crackers – I mean, HELLO! I’m guessing my latest “Junk Food Fantasy” (I have lots of them) is centered around burgers and crackers because I feel like I’m turning into a walking, talking plant. I’m carb-starved, meat-starved and sugar-starved, and I’m surprised I haven’t had a complete breakdown. I’ve discovered the thing about the documentary that prompted this whole drama is that the people in it truly make it look easy. As if downing four 16 oz. glasses of pure vegetable torture a day is not the worst experience one can have, food-wise. Well, I’m here to tell you, it’s pretty dang close.

Granted, I don’t like vegetables. NOT. ONE. BIT. Even eating a salad is nightmarish for me, and my version of salad usually consists of lettuce, cheese, meat and ranch on the side into which I will virtuously dip the tines of my fork as if I’m saving a million calories. If I’m feeling really healthy, I’ll down a low-sodium V8, and that pretty much covers my normal vegetable intake. I guarantee with this juice diet, I’ve had more vegetables in one day than I’ve probably had in the past two years. The morning meal is great because the juice is just different fruits and a little something extra like ginger or mint. I’ve started tossing a couple of handfuls of spinach into them and I can’t even taste it. It’s the rest of the day’s lineup that reminds me I have an overactive gag reflex. For example, here’s a dinner juice recipe: 3 large red beets, 2 medium carrots, 2 stalks celery, 4 plum tomatoes, 4 cups parsley, 1 jalapeno, and 12 red radishes. And that’s one of the more tolerable concoctions! These vegetables are seriously unappetizing to me on their own, let alone combined together into a room-temperature drink of madness! I’ve been doing it but it has been extremely difficult – I have to hold my nose and chug water alongside the juice just to get it down! However, I have noticed that I feel pretty great. YES, I’M ADMITTING IT. There’s a small possibility it’s got something to do with the veggies…

The first few days are definitely sluggish, but I’m now at the end of Day Five and I know my body is changing. My engagement ring keeps slipping around my finger and I swear my wrists have gotten smaller this week! Now, to transfer some of the fat loss from areas I don’t worry about to the over-abundance of areas I do worry about! Thighs, belly, etc. – c’mon vegetables, fix me! I did get to the point two days ago where I felt extremely sick and really wanted to quit, but I’ve been doing some pretty decent workouts while operating on a severe protein shortage. I decided to take Bo’s advice and incorporate two eggs in the morning and 4 oz. of chicken or fish at night. I really wanted to be hardcore and just do the juicing, but after feeling so sick, biting into that first plain piece of chicken was like biting into Heaven. A Heaven made of chicken!

The good news is I’m still in. Still sticking to it and not quitting. All I have to do is make it through next Friday and I’m done. It will technically be an 11-day cleanse by then, but I can do it. My kitchen smells like a compost pit and we have more than our fair share of fruit flies meandering about, but so far it really has been worth it. It’s expensive and time-consuming to prepare, but today I’m wearing a pair of jeans I haven’t fit into since January. It’s little victories like that which will keep me chugging ’til I can chug no more!

Six more days. Six more days. Six more days.

Great Start, So Far

Day Three of the 8-Week Challenge and so far, I’m feeling great!  As long as I can stay away from injuries, stress and candy, I should be golden!  I survived the “Before” picture trauma and now I will focus on making sure I have the best “After” picture I can possibly come up with.  Oh yeah, and the benefits of lower weight and better health – as if I could forget that mission.  I’ve recently had a handful of people tell me they’ve been following this blog, from my best friends to colleagues to Gold’s Gym members that I hadn’t met before.  I am so very grateful for the support and the interest, and I just wanted to say thanks to anyone who is reading The Great Shape Project!  I love to write and I’d also love to rock a pair of skinny jeans, so this blog helps me indulge future possibilities.  It’s also been so helpful for me to share what I go through with my weight.  I’ve been used to living with shame about it and I find now that it’s a little easier to be open than to hide.  Confronting my demons with this blog has taken away some of their scariness, and hopefully will make it easier to defeat them.

Speaking of sharing, here is the latest diet update: I’m doing a ten-day juice cleanse based on a documentary I saw called “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.”  It’s about a man who was inspired (and inspired others) to consume nothing but juiced fruits and vegetables for 60 days.  He lost a little less than 100 pounds and went off all of the medications he was taking for things like high blood pressure and high cholesterol.  His transformation, mentally as well as physically, was astounding, as was the transformation of the trucker he befriended along the way.  I highly recommend this documentary as it is an incredible testament to the benefits of a diet including a wide, colorful variety of fruits and vegetables.  It got me so fired up, I ran right out and got a juicer and a whole mess of things I never would have purchased before, like Swiss Chard, beets, kale and ginger root.  Armed with a bunch of recipes I found online, I’ve made it my mission to follow a juice diet (with some added protein along the way as advised by Bo, the Super Trainer) for ten days and see what happens.  I would really love to do it for 30 days, but honestly, there is no way I can go that long.  To say that I’m not fond of vegetables is putting it very sweetly, and I know there will come a point – not very far away, I’m afraid – at which I will buckle under the pressure of greens, greens and more greens.  I’ve already had to plug my nose while drinking one concoction I made, and it’s only the second day!  I’m a bit of a child, I know, but only when it comes to things that are good for me!  I also had to call my sister and ask her for prep tips since many of the veggies I bought are completely foreign to me.  Bo is on board and very supportive, and my sweet fiance has agreed to make my juices for me in exchange for his release from doing the cleanse with me.  I feel a little tired and I definitely have to get used to the whole concept of drinking all of my meals for ten straight days, but I’m really determined to see it through and see if it makes a noticeable difference in the way I feel.

 I will keep you posted.  Down the hatch!

 

 

 

 

 

Nerves

Well, I’ve chewed off all of my fingernails and my hair is graying so quickly that I can’t color it fast enough.  The 8-Week Challenge must be around the corner…

AHHH!  I’m so nervous this time around!  Why?  The only thing I can think of is that maybe I’m ready to actually compete this time, and admitting that SCARES. ME. TO. DEATH.  Instead of waiting to fail, as I have mentioned before is my tendency, I kind of want to see what I can really do.  Oh my gosh, this feels weird!  I’m not the person who admits they might actually be capable of losing weight – in a contest, no less – and even doing fairly well in that contest!  Are you kidding me?  That’s right up there with people finding out how much I weigh – for real.  Oh, wait.  Ahem.  People DO know how much I weigh.  I slapped that information right up in black and white in my first post!  And now that I think about it, now that I’ve made it public, I’ve removed what would normally be shame from that number and realized it’s just that.  A number.  Not only that, but it’s a number I can subtract from at any time!  What?!?  I have the power to change this number, this cloak of shame I’ve worn around me to make me invisible?  ”Absolutely!” is the answer to that.  I no longer want to be invisible.  I don’t want to hide in the back of the family pictures and constantly tug at my shirt as if every pull disguises the rolls.  Because guess what?  Tugging and rearranging and shifting DOESN’T DISGUISE THE ROLLS.  I don’t want to miss pool parties because of how I look in a swimsuit and wear sweltering pants in 98-degree weather because I hate my thighs and those little fat pockets around my knees.  And I definitely don’t want fat pockets around my knees!!  I mean, what is that ABOUT??

I’m actually a bit competitive.  Not in an “in your face bragging or pouting” kind of way, but rather in a more internal sense.  I’m the person who suggests playing H-O-R-S-E because you don’t really have to have any actual basketball skills, and then I secretly fume when I lose.  I’m the one who plays Cranium and laughs at my horrible artistic ability on the outside while discreetly throwing eye daggers to the person who could not figure out that – HELLO – I was OBVIOUSLY sculpting a DOG out of that clay!  And uh, I’m the one who participates in the Jacob’s Ladder contest because “I really think I can take these guys!” and then I’m devastated to come in 12th out of 12 competitors!  So, perhaps a bit misguided in my competitiveness, but competitive nonetheless.  This time,  I face my most ruthless opponent: self-doubt.  A loathsome beast with very sneaky tactics that shows no mercy when going in for the win.  But I have some sneaky tactics of my own and I’m pulling out the big guns.  I’m reluctant to call it confidence at this point, so for right now we’ll call it focus.  Something I had been completely lacking in my first two Challenges and which I now feel has planted firm roots.

I’m anxious to discover not only what grows from those roots, but what blooms.  See you at the starting line!

8-Week Challenge!

Gold’s Gym is getting ready to start its annual 8-Week Challenge this month, with starting dates set for the 19th and the 26th.  Bo has informed me that I will be participating.  I have informed Bo that I will be cowering in a corner, rocking back and forth in terror at the thought of having to YET AGAIN squeeze into a bikini for the “Before” picture.

The Challenges and I do not get along.  I have participated in two so far: the 8-Week Challenge in Fall of 2010, and this past Spring’s 12-Week Challenge.  I didn’t complete either Challenge, due to illness during the first one and due to power-eating my way though boxes of Mike and Ikes during the second one.  If, in fact, the goal for each of those Challenges had been to see who could GAIN the most weight and change their bodies for the worse, well then, I’d be a two-time champion!  But back to my previous dread: the pictures.  This upcoming Challenge will signify the third time that I’ve jammed, crammed and smushed myself into three fabric triangles of torture in order to be forever captured on film.  Film that I pray never falls into the hands of anyone who may not like me much.  (CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT HORROR??)  Not only will this be the third “Before” picture, it will also be the one in which I am the biggest.  Talk about humiliating.  Since I have significantly expanded my waistline at the start of each challenge rather than having gone in the other, much-preferred direction, you can see why I’ve got a small issue with starting this whole mess again.

However, start the whole mess again I shall.  The shine still hasn’t worn off of the shoes I bought for the last challenge, so once I get past the bikini part, I should be okay.  It would be a really nice feeling to complete a Challenge FOR ONCE, and to have lost pounds instead of gaining.  To finally have an actual “After” picture!!  Unfortunately, I’ve become quite used to starting something and then quitting before I really give myself the chance to succeed.  That’s not how I want to be, and that’s certainly not behavior I want to exhibit to my daughter.  She deserves better than that.  She deserves a strong role model in her mother, showing her that truly wanting great things for herself is the first step to actually getting them.  I hadn’t believed that I was worth the effort before, but now I’ve come around and time is of the essence.  If I have to crowbar myself into a bikini to show my Isla that healthy change is good change, than I will do it.  Not happily.  Not without some tears, but I will do it.

If anyone out there is thinking of joining the 8-Week Challenge and seriously on the fence because of the “Before” picture, I get it.  I feel your pain and I’m here to tell you, if I can do it, then so can you.  Line up with me and we’ll do it together.  Let’s rip the bandaid off so that we can truly begin to heal the wounds underneath.  So many of us need this and if we stick together, we can all make it.  And at the end, when the bikinis (or Speedos) mock us with their taunts, we will wear them with confidence – maybe even some swagger! – and fabric triangles of torture will no longer tell us who we are.

Wide Awake Now

Two nights ago, I had the craziest dream.  The kind of dream that wakes you up in the middle of the night and leaves you breathing a huge sigh of relief once you realize it didn’t really happen.  I’m pretty convinced that I had this particular dream due to some underlying anxiety over my training session I had with Bo earlier that day.  I will tell you about the session, but first, the dream:

Bo is always hammering home to me that I’ve got to get in some protein in the afternoon to keep me full and to restore my energy, especially after a workout.  So I dreamt that I finished up a particularly brutal training session with him and headed off to make my protein shake.  In my dream, the gym is virtually empty so there is no one around anywhere.  I’m making my standard chocolate protein shake when I reach down into this super-sized carton of french fries and begin piling them into my shake!  As I’m doing this, suddenly all of our personal trainers are showing up around me but I’m oblivious to it as I continue to load up fries from this bottomless carton.  Suddenly I look up to notice Bo coming around the corner, and everything goes into slow motion mode as he notices what I’m doing.  He’s yelling out, “Nooooooooo!” and elbowing his way through the trainers, and in a panic, I start frantically taking the fries out of the blender and trying to hide them.  By the time he gets to me, I  am a huge mess and I have piles of smoothie-covered french fries hanging out of my pockets!  Bo’s face is bright-red with fury and he grabs my blender, holds it up in the air and points to me.  “Do you see, people?  Do you finally get what I have to deal with with this woman?!?”  I start crying and in an attempt to defend myself, I begin explaining that I was trying to get my carbs in that I didn’t have that morning.  Bo yells out, “What world do you live in that you think putting greasy fries in a protein shake is a good way to get in your carbs?”  I stand there in silence as all of the trainers are looking me up and down like I’m some sort of pariah, and then I woke up.

Wow, Dream!  Is that crazy or what?  I know without a doubt that the precursor to that dream was my training session that day – Thursday.  That was the day Bo had set my goal to 194, and guess who was firmly planted at 203?  I told him I hadn’t felt well and I was just eating all carbs to settle my stomach.  I wasn’t working out at all and I wasn’t watching what I ate because so many things sounded unappealing to me, and then it was just a string of excuses beyond that.  We started our workout and I could just feel the disappointment radiating off of Bo.  He was quiet and then finally said, “When do you think you are going to start taking this seriously?”  Not to make me feel bad.  Not to attack me.  Simply a question to find out the truth.  If I hadn’t been doing dumbbell raises with my head down, he would have seen me crying.  “This is your weight loss journey, Amanda.  You’ve already said that you don’t like where you are, you don’t like your clothes being too tight, you don’t like feeling bad about yourself – so why do you keep sabotaging yourself?”   Humiliation scalded over me like hot lava.  There are so many reasons behind self-sabotage and I have become a total expert at it.  Every time I start seeing small successes, it’s like I know I’m going to screw-it up eventually, so why not just get a head start?  Truly, I don’t want to think that way because I know nothing good happens with an attitude like that.  I have a lot of things to figure out – a lot – but I know that I never want to feel that way again.  To feel unworthy of a better life, of a thinner body, and of feeling amazing about myself.  The way I felt that day was pretty much the complete opposite of amazing.

I told Bo, “Well, if you’re thinking of firing me, you can’t because I already paid for all of my sessions, so ha!”  To which he replied that he has never fired someone and he doesn’t want to start now.  Relieved, I just explained that I’m sick of the excuses, too.  The stories, the lies, the fiction that I create about my current state of health.  I going around acting like no one’s going to call me out, but that is precisely what Bo did, and thank goodness he did it.  I don’t want to keep screwing up, promising that I’ll start over “tomorrow, after So-and-So’s party, after this upcoming birthday, after Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas,” blah, blah, blah.

I started paying attention that moment.  Really, really PAYING ATTENTION.  The light bulb has come on.  Not with a flicker, but with a strobe-light intensity.  Something has shifted and something has begun.  After four weeks of jacking around and not taking it seriously, I see just how serious I need to be.  The excuses have been replaced with focus, and now when I say I will not waver, there is no little voice in my head claiming otherwise.

I am finally going in the direction I need to be going, and I will be running full-blast to that finish line.  No more “French Fries as Carbs in the Smoothies” excuses!!!