Wow, it’s been a while!
Well, I’ve got a lot to catch you up on, but even more to reflect on.
This is week 41 since I first started on this “Fitness Journey” (yeah, I counted). Now since it has been so long since I last wrote, I originally was thinking about “restarting” back to week 1. Well as I wrote in a post awhile ago, there is no restart buttons in life so I will continue on. This is a Journey after all.
Confession Time
I fell off the wagon, hard. I mean for crying out loud, it’s week 41 and my last post was week 17!! I seriously can’t believe its been that long and it’s frankly quite embarrassing. Not really because I haven’t wrote in that long but because I stopped working out regularly on Labor Day, May 28th. Sure, not as long as I stopped writing but close enough. I fell off the wagon and haven’t really given much thought or effort to get back on. I have fell right back into my comfort zones and right back into my old habits. After 17 weeks I was feeling a little mentally burnt out due to the lack of progress that I wanted to see, but overall I thought I had this new way of life in the bag, only to be getting better and better. I was wrong.
Reflection Time
Looking back on some of my old posts is actually what finally pulled me back out of my funk and reminded me why I need to get back to my journey. Remembering just how much happier I am when at least trying to improve myself and struggling is much much better than not trying at all. I just feel like a useless pile of shit when I’m not at least trying.
The bumps in the road that threw me off the wagon consist of two main things. The first, my house flooded. I live in the basement of my house with my wife and daughter, on Labor day our septic main line backed up, flooding our basement. We have the worst luck with floods as it was our third one within a single year, all different issues. So between the clean up, dealing with insurance, and living in a construction zone, there was not much time to work out. There definitely wasn’t any cooking going on during that time either. Of course with any projects there were further issues and delays, long story short, my family and I were basically living in the one unaffected room in the house for over 2 months before it was all put back together.
The second issue is that I got sick during that time, and would try to work out but felt like throwing up and I felt like throwing up for about 3 weeks straight. Not to mention, I also was still dealing with some shoulder / neck injuries.
Now these are obviously excuses, good ones in my opinion, but excuses nonetheless. The real nail in the coffin that stopped me from picking right back up where I left off once my house / life was put back together was stress. It’s a killer of everything. I was stressed about my house and my babies health/safety for over 2 months straight. Stressed about the process to ensure it was all put together correctly. Stressed about not working out and eating out every single day (Guilt, causing more stress, causing more bad behavior, causing more guilt). After my home was finally put back together and we started to try to get back into routine, our washer broke down and we had to buy a new one. More financial stress and more financial burden. It was at times overbearing and more than enough to kill all my motivation and desire to improve myself.
This is the crazy life we all live. We all have our ups and downs. I was doing really well and was in a really great mindset for about 23 straight weeks, then I was in a pretty stressed out, negative thinking mindset for the next 18. Good news is that starting today, I’m officially back and overall feeling back to the person I want to be. Also, I had more positive weeks than “negative” so technically, I am starting from a better place again now than I did 41 weeks ago.
I did want to mention before I wrap this post up, that even though I had a slump in my progress, I did learn a lot about myself reflecting on that time period. Mainly, I am not as mentally tough as I thought was at week 17. I was so in the groove I was sure I would be able to keep it up forever. I was sure I would never go back to my old habits, man was I wrong. At the end of the day though you can never really know what life has in store for you. You can never know what obstacles you will have to face and overcome in order to continue your pursuit. I learned that I need to continue practice positive thinking and positive mindset everyday. I need to continue practicing at least a bare minimum daily meditation routine to avoid letting my mind slip. Practicing daily meditation for even 10 minutes will give a base foundation of mental fortitude that I can continue to build on from there. Because I didn’t have an exact daily routine that I never wavered from it was easy for me to sink back into what I know best, what I am most comfortable doing. Implementing a daily practice I believe will help me overcome these obstacles in life that will throw me off track or interrupt my routine. I believe it will help me develop real mental strength and make my lows higher and shorter.
Back to the drawing board folks, hopefully this time around I can make it past a 23 week high with implementing strict daily routines.
Current Weight: 184
Total Weight Movement Since Week 17: +6 pounds
You’re not getting any younger
The Cardinal Gift 