All The Wrong Reasons

Well Good Morning! And thanks to stumbling upon a new blog, it is now a very good morning for me, very good indeed!

Yesterday's gym workout was terrible. TEEERR-EEEBBBLLLE. The likes of which has not been seen by me since...well, ever. I could barely jog half a mile before I had to stop and walk (note that in weeks previous I have made it in excess of 4+ miles before having to take a wee break). I ended up jogging for 30 minutes and I don't even think that I made 2 miles. It was pathetic and heartbreaking. I decided that perhaps I am not a morning jogger and that I should instead focus my attention on the stationary bike for 30 minutes. Right. I made it about 12 minutes and then quit. Yep, quit. Off I went to Stretching Corner and proceeded to stare off into space and beat the living shit out of myself for not doing better. For not going harder, for not taking advantage of the small amount of time that I have for exercise. Pretty much shit kicked myself at 5am. Lovely.

Got in the shower, degraded my flab while getting dressed, headed to work and then refused to let myself eat second breakfast because I didn't deserve it, I hadn't worked for it.

This morning I had 4am gym and aaaaalmost didn't go. I did a warmup and then pushed weights for an hour. It was a good effort (not like yesterday) but I have still been stuck in my head, wondering and yelling and berating and worrying over my apparant lack of progress in dropping these 10 pounds and increasing my endurance and muscle.

At work this morning our computers are down so I took the opportunity to look for new blogs to read. And boy did I find one!

This post
is my answer. This post completely explained, exactly at the right time, what my issue is. I started April Fitness Challenge at the beginning of April and I was having great success. I was loving my workouts and challenging myself and as a special bonus I had dropped 4 pounds in the first 2 weeks. And that's where it all went off the rails. Four pounds! Well that wasn't that difficult at all, if I work a little harder and a little longer I can lose more. If I eat a little less and work a little harder and a little longer, maybe I can look like a fitness model. YAY!

Dumb, dumb girl. What I did was stressed my body and turned my mind into a psycho success killer that never stopped. To quote Rachel:

All of the sudden, it was like nothing I did was good enough. My workouts weren’t long enough. My eating wasn’t clean enough. My journey became less about taking myself to the fitness limits and more about the carb/protein ratio. Nothing I did was good enough — especially in the food department.

Thanks to a random blog that I happened upon, I've made a mind shift back to where I should be. Back to doing good because it feels good and because I want to and I need the time alone and the self love. A mind shift away from how much weight I can lose and how much food that exercise means I can eat and how many calories I burn.

Back to where I should be and I'm flipping thrilled! I doubt that I will ever leap out of bed and burst into song at 4am, it will still be difficult to get up and get going but at least now I don't feel like where I'm going is to fight a losing battle. I'm not losing the fight, I was just at the wrong location!