One week does not a catastrophe make

You know, I get a lot of people telling me that I am inspirational. Normally, that makes me feel pretty good. I'm not telling you this in order to brag. I'm telling you this because the truth is that I have felt pretty far from inspirational lately. I've been in a truly funkalicious funk ("Funkalicious" was my second choice for a title, so I still wanted to incorporate it into the entry). And that doesn't exactly inspire me to write in this blog very much. For all my talk about wanting this blog to be about sharing my successes AND my failures, let's face it: it's way more fun to write about the successes. I mean, it's not exactly on the top of everyone's to-do list to share with the world where they have screwed up. And as a recovering perfectionist (haha), it's really not on the top of my to-do list.

But then I got to thinking (always dangerous). What does it really mean to be inspirational? Sure, some of it is about having success. Obviously more people tend to take notice when you say you've lost 150 pounds in a year than if you said you had lost 15 pounds. But I think it is about more than that. People aren't perfect. Frankly, I don't think most people really gain a lot from having other people talk about how they are perfect. It's also pretty annoying in my opinion. I think people get inspired when they can see themselves in someone else's story. I think in my case, people see in my blog that I am far from perfect. They see that I have slip-ups. They see that I still battle with old habits and ways of thinking. But I think what most people take away is that despite all those imperfections, I have still had quite a bit of success. And I think that makes a lot of people believe that they can do this too. So I think maybe being inspirational is less about being perfectly successful, and more about letting down your guard and letting people see that you can have success even with a million little mistakes along the way. It's about being imperfectly successful. And yes, I just made up that term.

So with that in mind, I think it's important I share with you what's been going on with me lately, even if that's not too flattering. It has been kind of a perfect storm for a funk. It started with me getting a cold and having some pretty severe asthma problems as a result. I probably needed to go to the doctor for steroids, but I avoid those devil drugs at all costs. Consequently, my asthma problems didn't clear up as fast as they probably could have. I couldn't go to the gym for an entire week. Well, I guess I could have gone, but I wasn't really in the mood for out of control wheezing and a possible ambulance ride to the hospital, which probably would have been the result. So, strike #1: no gym. During this time period, my computer decided to shut down on me. My computer, which allows me to upload my calorie burn and input my food log for the day, and charge my Bodybugg. The machine which allows me to type in my blog. My computer, which I normally use to access other weight loss blogs and sources of inspiration for me. All gone. Strike #2. Finally, we have the fact that I have been frustrated due to the fact that I've basically been the same weight (up and down a bit every week) for a good six weeks now. Super frustrating. Strike #3...welcome to my funk. So I made excuses for myself. I could have very easily added up my calories for the day using good old fashioned pen and paper. Yet I didn't. I made the excuse that since I didn't have my computer to do my Bodybugg stuff, I just wouldn't count calories. At this point, a very loud alarm should have sounded, to the effect of, "Danger! Danger! Stupid idiot who needs accountability!" A softer version of that alarm was there, but I chose to ignore it. I was busy feeling sorry for myself about not being able to go the gym. Instead of focusing on the things I could control, like my nutrition, I focused on the fact that I couldn't work out, which I decided meant I couldn't lose weight. So why bother counting calories? Stupid, stupid girl. My all or nothing mentality reared its ugly head again there. I couldn't do everything right that week, so I decided to do nothing at all. It's not that I went completely crazy with my eating. I probably didn't even go that far over my calorie goals. It's not what I ate, it's how I ate it. I ate when I wasn't hungry. I ate when I was bored. I did not practice mindful eating. A recipe for disaster. It's a very slippery slope indeed.

So I gained weight last week. No surprise. It killed me that I couldn't go directly to the gym to work extra hard after I saw that number. It scared me. I don't ever want to be afraid of what that scale will say again. I spent too many years suffering from that particular fear. So I turned things around. I did what I could, even if it wasn't perfect. I got back to the gym Sunday, and didn't act like a crazy manic person. I did what my body told me it needed. And this week, I lost weight. Am I proud of last week? Nope, but like I said in the title, one week does not a catastrophe make. What is important is that I haven't given up. I've realized where I went wrong, and I am powering through. That's what I want people to take away from my blog. I may make mistakes along the way (plenty of them!), but I refuse to give up until I reach my goals.