Push It

If you follow me on Instagram (also, I’m back on Twitter – follow me!) you may have seen me post about last week being difficult. Which, being on a competition prep (or going through any very rigorous/disciplined chapter) that’s to be expected. I’ve had lots of really great weeks with some difficult ones the past 15 weeks but last week was especially rough. I was having major doubts about my abilities, I felt like I wasn’t seeing the progress I wanted, I was becoming discouraged, etc.

On Thursday I was in the midst of my training session doing plyometrics and I just lost it. I was face down on the carpet bawling my eyes out. I’ve posted about crying during workouts before and I had someone tell me, “working out isn’t something to cry about” and that it wasn’t that serious. That kind of caused me to want to be reserved about sharing the difficult days I go through but you know what? Getting in shape is DIFFICULT. Anything you are 110% committed to is not going to be easy. It’s painful and it’s a commitment to make strides every day – to make good choices, to do it when you don’t feel like it, but most importantly – to never give up. I am so serious about what I am doing that I do have a lot of feelings about it and contrary to what a lot of people think, I do have other things going on in my life, too. I watched Ronda Rousey’s interview on The Ellen Show recently and she talked about how she cried a lot – because of how much work goes into preparing for a fight and it’s an emotional thing for her. When you’re so involved in what you do, you put everything into it and sometimes you cry. It’s cool. That’s all I gotta say about that!

A lot of this I can attribute to the roller coaster of being on prep and hormones, etc., but there was something to be said for last week. It really almost broke me. I knew the feeling was going to be temporary but when you are in that head space it is all you see. Something good to come out of those moments when I was being really hard on myself. Despite feeling like I hadn’t made any progress we checked my BF % on Thursday and it had gone down again. Progress. And, then the weekend happened. I was beginning to feel myself even out a little bit more and as per the usual, I was taking progress pictures and I noticed a huge change (to me) in my body. I can’t tell you how excited I was. I fought through that hard week of feeling like I hadn’t made any progress only to realize I really had made huge progress. You see, this has always been way more about losing weight. “Don’t blow away,” everyone says. It’s not about being skinny. It’s about building a new body. It’s about shedding the old me. It’s about being healthy.

Being fit and healthy isn’t about a number on a scale. In fact, I threw my scale away months ago. I weigh myself every few weeks with my trainer but that’s it. Other than that, I don’t look at a scale. A number doesn’t define me or tell me how well I’m doing or show me true progress. It’s not about fitting in a certain clothes size or being accepted or being desired. It’s about being me – 100% me. This is who I’ve always been meant to be. I have absolutely no doubt about it – whatever clicked inside of me this spring caused a tidal wave of change to rush over into every area of my life. I’ve had moments of blissful happiness, but they’ve not been of any credit to myself – this time I am happy because I am happy with myself.

If you’re happy with yourself then that’s what matters. We all don’t have to be the same. We all don’t have to have the same goals or strive toward being in what each of us deems “in shape.” Life isn’t a competition. I’ve had friends tell me they were jealous and that has left me feeling really strange. My life isn’t anything to be jealous of – I have my own skeletons and issues just like everyone else. I work hard – very hard – at something I am passionate about. I do have a great life but we all have things in our life that make it amazing… we just so often focus on others’ greatness we forget about our own.

When you think you can’t go on – you can. When you think it won’t make a difference – it will. When you think you’re the only one going through it – you’re not. When you feel like giving up – don’t. Those are when you get the “Aha!” moments, the moments you have been working so hard towards pay off, the moments when you get a second (or third or fourth) wind, the moments when you feel the difference. Those are the moments worth the sacrifice.