Well,That Was Startling!

I knew I wasn’t imagining it when, these past few weeks, I’ve been feeling a little uncomfortable in anything that wasn’t yoga pants….but heading to the gym this morning and seeing myself in the Big Room of Mirrors was a little….disappointing…but at the same time….not.

 

The disappointing part was that I have a little work to do.  It’s not a complete shit-show, just a couple months of determined, focused hard work at the gym and in the kitchen and the me in the mirror will be matching the me in my mind in no time flat!  It’s so funny how we can convince ourselves that things-are-fine-leave-me-alone-a-little-ok-enormous-amount-of-chocolate-is-fine-I’ll-burn-it-off-stop-looking-at-me!  I was actually quite tempted this morning to step on the scale and put a number to the drama…..but I didn’t.  What’s the point?  I can see me in the mirror, I know where I am and I know where I should be.  I suppose sometimes the scale-standing is how people can easily see if things are out of hand and need the reins pulled back.  But don’t you know that anyway?  Don’t you already sort of know when things don’t look as nice or you can’t immediately put on anything in your closet and rock it?  Don’t you sort of already know when your face looks a bit puffy a few mornings in a row?  Don’t you sort of already know when you’ve been eating shit and not exercising?  I know already and for that reason I am not willing to get sucked back into the lunacy that is the weight-scale.

 

So ya, this morning was a bit disappointing….although when I really think about it, I have nothing to be surprised about.  It wasn’t just the last couple weeks of not going to the gym, it’s more like a month of hit or miss exercise and too much unrestricted sugar eating.  Disappointing because had I not crapped out for a month I wouldn’t be “starting again”.  Alas, I love starting again.  I used to hate it.  I’d get injured or sick or stressed or whatever and I’d have to start over and I hated it.  Now?  I don’t mind.  “Starting over” just means that life was going on and while admittedly I would prefer that life happen AND I stay fit and in the gym consistently, I don’t really mind that I don’t/can’t.  That’s just not the way I’m built.  I push and kick and fight and try and dig as much as I can.  But when things get to be too stressful or too busy or too overwhelming, I lay down the optional stuff and focus on getting by/through/over whatever it is.  It’s taken me a long time to learn this about myself; a long time to not immediately beat myself up about breaks or hiatuses but to ride them out, know there is an end date and then “start over”. 

 

So this morning was my 2,146,232^nd “start over”.  Won’t be the last, either!  I did 140# leg presses, 36 assisted pull-ups (the machine took on 105 pounds of me, I did the rest), some weighted split squats, some ham curls, some straight-arm lat pulldowns, some tricep kicks and then I ran on the treadmill for .75 of a mile before I stretched and headed home.  Not so shabby!  Today I had green salad with chicken for breakfast and it’s spaghetti squash with ginger beef & broccoli for lunch.  Lots of water throughout the day and tonight we’re having turkey-stuffed portabella mushrooms and salad for dinner.  Gym tomorrow morning.

 

It feels so good to have a plan.  It makes the extra jiggle in the tummy mean absolutely nothing because when you’re doing all the right things, nothing else matters.  Do you feel better when you have a plan in place?  Does it make the fact that you’re not “there” yet matter less when you’re working through a strategic plan?

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