I want you to ask yourself what you are agreeing to and how does that serve you.
If you are a current or former member of T School, I am pretty sure you were motivated to join that program as you were unsatisfied the way something was going in your world and wanted support to make those changes.
That might have been wanting to lose a few pounds, have more energy, or take a stand for your self by improving your health, vitality, and ability to be present for your loved ones.
Whatever it was, you cared enough about that change to invest in this program and become part of this community. Now here it is, almost two-thirds of the way into it and you may have forgotten what the big deal was anyway.
You may have thought the first 21 days were your challenge, but this is the true challenge: continuing when it’s no longer a defined endgame- when it’s real life and decidedly NOT sexy to remember why you began.
Herb and I recently returned from a very interesting adventure in Canada, The trip turned out nothing like we’d planned and we found ourselves bored and restless. It rained so there wasn’t much outdoor activity to be had and you can only stare lovingly into your partner’s eyes so long before you go nuts…. and nuts is exactly what we went.
We ate hamburgers and yam fries and drank Bloody Mary’s with bacon on top. We ate fish and chips (worth it!) and drank beer and wine (what! we never drink beer and wine!) and got so deep in our cups one night we told our waiter in Vancouver it was our 30th Wedding Anniversary to get a special dessert.
I remember after that particular day/night of debauchery, Herb reaching over to me in the morning and saying. “How are you feeling this morning?” to which I replied in a voice unrecognizable to humans, “Well how the hell do you think I feel?”
So the question is, what did I agree to and how did it serve me? I think you might know the answer.
I was served all right: OVER SERVED. But those choices had not one thing to do with serving me, my goals, my health or my sense of well being.
So why do we do this to ourselves? We say one thing and we do the other.
Of course, if I had the answer to that, I’d have shared it with you by now in
T School!
The short answer is we’re all human. We are creatures of habits- even when some of them turn out to be inconsistent with what we say we want for ourselves.
But we’re looking for PROGRESS here, not necessarily PERFECTION, right?
As someone who has made the same changes in her life as she is asking you to make, I know it’s a matter of PRACTICE to become healthier in our choices. It’s not automatic and our progress is never linear. But I also know, for all my F-ups along the way, I have actually learned a different way of eating, moving and living in the process, AND achieved my fitness and fat loss goals along the way.
If you ask anyone that’s been through this program more than once, the choices you make do change over time. It really does become less and less of a chore to eat well and move more. In fact, the penalty for looking the other way is a resounding wake up call; how bad does it feel to feel so awful when you know what it’s like to feel really good.
Okay, I can hear some of you now…. “yeah, but I never felt good and I don’t feel that bad now- I just feel fat.”
Well, then there’s that. And for most of us, like it or not, feeling fat is probably the reason we got into T School in the first place.
And if we look a little deeper, that feeling is just the icing on the cake (sorry, I had to go there). The real issues we have with food just go so much deeper don’t they? Why else would continue to repeat the same habits that keep us stuck and unhappy?
Those are questions we are addressing as we move into our third trimester of T School. Getting sugar out of your house and your body was the first step towards ridding yourself of your cravings and creating more room for choice. It was also designed to quiet that nagging assaulting voice in your head for feeling powerless over your cravings.
And guess what. You did it.
Now it’s time to look at what drives you backward AND what moves you forward. How can we overcome the persistent pull to regress, make excuses and then judge ourselves?
Coming home. When it comes down to it, our bodies and our health are the only home we’ve got.
So, what are we agreeing to and how does it serve us? That’s the question. That’s everything.