I found this picture today, and it couldn’t be more fitting for what I went thru yesterday, but also relates to a comment I made on a post earlier today. I’ve never actually put this down on paper, but writing it makes it more real for me, more concrete.
I’ve struggled for many years to get below 200lbs. It seems that every time I approach this number, something happens and I creep back up, or I just stay where I’m at. The first time that I lost 50 lbs I wasn’t even really trying, it was just the circumstances of my life that led me to work out more and I ate less because of the demands of my jobs. Circumstances changed, as well as a bad injury, and I started eating differently (oh, and drinking alcohol for the first time in my life). I enjoyed that stress relief on Friday and Saturday nights. I maintained that weight loss at around 200lbs for a year or so, and then I started to creep up. The yo-yo dieting started and I could never get past that 200lb mark but I could get to it.
So what is that ‘something’ that stopped me from reaching my goal. It is my fear of failure. The fear that I will try to break that 200lb mark, but not be able to do it. It is easier for me to find a reason, or many reasons, that I stop eating well, or that I stop working out. I’ve come up with so many over the past 4-5 years – my work schedule, my dogs, some sort of injury that I really could have worked my way thru, and the list goes on. It is only recently that I’ve recognized what that something really is. This fear, unfortunately, manifests itself throughout my life. It is not just a small piece that I need to fix, but a large piece. I’m working on it day by day – breaking that wall of fear with each success.
So, when those excuses that pop up in my head that are really my fear talking, I will be calling that voice a liar. No matter how much my body and mind said to stop during my bike ride yesterday, I told it otherwise. I told myself that the feeling of giving up is worse than all the excuses to stop that I could come up with.