Yesterday, one of the bloggers I regularly check in on posted a few questions to her readers, and invited them the answer in the comments section. The questions were:
1) "What keeps you motivated?"
2) "What keeps you inspired?"
3) "Why do you continute to fight over and over again for your healthiness?"
4) "Is the reason you started different than the reason you keep fighting?"
I fully admit that I am pretty much a strict read-only follower of many blogs. It takes a lot for me to comment. I don't comment on blogs so that people will click on my name and find my blog, although I do almost always check out the blogs of people that leave comments here (THANK YOU!). I comment when something in the post moves me. I was very close to commenting on this post yesterday, but after reading the few comments already left by people, I decided against it. Instead, I'm going to hijack the idea and use my answers for the base of my post.
First, I want to change the order in which I answer the questions from the order they were asked. I think the most important question in this set is the 3rd one, and for me, it leads to the answers for the remaining questions. So, why do I continue to fight over and over for my healthiness?
In short, because I know I can be better. There is always something I can do to improve upon my current situation, and I've been in all sorts of situations. I've been fit (although I didn't realize it at the time), I've been less than fit, I've been really really unfit (again, didn't realize it at the time) and at each of those phases in my life, I always knew there was more I could be doing. The hardest thing for me to accept lately is that in order to keep fighting for my healthiness, I must go against a lot of things I've been told are beneficial. Some people see my new way of eating/exercising/living as extreme, or a fad, or cultish. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but until you have walked a mile in my shoes, or lived 32 years of my life, you don't know what is best for me. You are an expert on you, I'm an expert on me. Normal judgement and speculation by people that know me well enough to ask questions about my diet has made this more of a fight than I had hoped. I continue to fight because this is the best I've ever felt, and eating this way completely releases the hold that food once had on me. Unless you've felt that helpless feeling, of repeatedly doing something detrimental to your health/body despite KNOWING better, and then having that behavior completely stop, you may not understand why this is so exciting for me.
Is the reason I started different than the reason I keep fighting? Absolutely. I've dedicated many posts to revealing how intitially all I wanted was to lose weight. I realize now I couldn't have been any more vague. I slowly let go of getting a number stuck in my head and doing what I thought I needed to do to get there. Now I look for changes in the way my clothes fit, how much more weight I can lift, or how much faster I am. I don't have a goal weight, because it has been replaced by the many things I want to be able to do (deadlift 300#, squat 250#, OH squat my body weight, 30" box jump, free standing hand stand, pull-ups, run sub 8 minute miles, the list goes on...) So yeah, I'd say my reason has changed significantly.
What keeps me motivated? Seeing progress. Feeling good. Not suffering from allergies/headaches. Remembering things I couldn't do one year ago that I can do today. Writing out my experiences. Having people join me for 30 days. Knowing that as long as I keep on this path, one day it will all catch up to me. Something will finally click, and I will be unstoppable.
What keeps me inspired? Seeing others make huge gains toward their goals. Constantly changing things up so I don't get bored.
If I stand still in this moment right here, and reflect on how I got here, I see a lot of growing up, adapting, learning, changing, practicing, and listening. There is no one way. There is no magic pill. And there definitely is no stopping.
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