Sunday, August 10, 2014

Thinking About the Good

So this challenge I've given myself started off with a bang. Boy, oh boy, was that first week amazing! I was feeling so pumped about eating healthy, exercising, and sharing it all with you. I exercised everyday, cut down on my calories, upped my protein and water, I even lost a whole 8 pounds in that first week! Needless to say, I was on a total high.

By day 10 I was feeling confident, maybe a little too confident. So on Thursday I decided I would indulge in just a small piece of chocolate my father-in-law bought for s'mores that evening. I thought "I've been doing so great, I'm just going to have one piece. I deserve it." Well, that one piece turned into the entire chocolate bar. Sad face. I was kidding myself when I thought I could control myself and have just a little bite. I have an all-or-none personality (and it's something I trying to work on), so once I started that chocolate bar I knew what was going to happen; I'd go all crazy on that 230 calorie bar of chocolate-y goodness and feel sick about it for the rest of the night. In the end, that guilt and loss of confidence in my ability to change trickled into Friday, and then Saturday, and then into today. 

I kept asking myself (and my husband Tanner, who is supporting me 100%) if I really could do this. If I really could change. Maybe I was just kidding myself. Maybe I was just fooling all of you. 

But then I snapped out of it. Sometime, this evening I came to the realization that I am NOT defined by these last three days! I have spent my entire life creating these unhealthy habits, and I am not going to change completely in a week. This is going to be hard work. But I just need to believe that I am worth that work, and that I have the capacity to do it. I also realize that I need to give myself more slack and to think on the good choices I've made, rather than all the poor ones. For example, we took a trip this weekend as a family, visiting family and friends, and even though I may not have made the BEST decisions in terms of food, I DID get all my exercising in while we were away.

While staying with some friends Friday and Saturday, I told them about this challenge I've started for myself and my desire to be healthy and fit. I went on to tell them that as part of this challenge I need to exercise every day. They were curious about what kind of workouts I do and we all came to the fun idea that we should do the next mornings workout all together! Boy, was that fun!

I got the idea for Saturday's workout from my sister-in-law and bother-in-law (who I will formally introduce to you later this week) and it's called Hit the Deck. For this work out you need a deck of cards. Place the cards in a pile face down, and flip each card over as you work your way through the deck. So this is how it goes down: spades are squats, clubs are push-ups, diamonds are sit-ups, hearts are burpees. So let's say that the first card you flip is a 6 of spades, you would do 6 squats and then flip the next card. 10 clubs is 10 push-ups. 9 of diamonds is 9 sit-ups. You get the idea. All face cards are 10 of whatever the exercise is, and, if you are playing with them, jokers are a 400m run (when we did this on Saturday, we couldn't all  go for a run as we couldn't leave our kids alone in the house so we did 2 mins of skipping instead). This is a tough, but really fun workout as you never know what card/exercise is next. If you do it as fast as you can you really get your heart rate up there and really get your sweat on. In the end we ended up doing 85 squats, 85 burpees, 85 sit-ups, and 85 push-ups! Pretty awesome! It was my first time doing the Hit the Deck work out and my first time exercising with others and I am certainly it will not be the last for either. 

Here is Tanner and I with our friends, the Hoves, post-workout. 



So this weekend, even though I made some not-so-awesome choices, it certainly wasn't the biggest failure of my life and I can move on and only get better. Something else I learned this weekend is that you can never undervalue the importance of surrounding yourself with people who have similar goals and ideas about fostering a healthy lifestyle. 

So here I am, sitting at the computer, feeling bloated from the delicious piece of pie I ate after Sunday dinner, looking forward to the days ahead. I am not perfect and what I am doing is not easy, but I can do it.

I got this. 

1 comment:

  1. Glad you gave your head a shake and got back at it. :) It's sad how easily one piece of chocolate can mess with ours head...and then completely derail you! I know that feeling well. But all we can do is let go of the past and refocus on the next challenge...whether it be a birthday party, a trip to a restaurant or just what to have as an afternoon snack. You're doing everything right to get where you want to go. There will be lots of ups and downs but as long as you keep doing what you're doing (working hard and shaking off the "downs" and refocusing) I have no doubt you will get there! You are inspiring :)

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