Write an emotional and weight history - complete with photos.
Explore fears & anxieties associated with not reaching my goals and with reaching my goals.
Look at those fat photos that are hard to look at and try to figure out who I was in them. Recognize that that girl is me, the same one who decided to do a triathlon, the same one who has protected me, supported me, encouraged me and believed in me. She is in me. Understand that girl, embrace her, love her. Help her see that fat is not the best way to live.
When I want to overeat, stop myself and ask myself, “what is causing me to eat instead of deal?”
My biggest hurdle is improving my eating. Take a long term view. Eat well TODAY and praise myself for my successes. Daily. Recognize and appreciate each fitness and health improvement, small and big, regularly.
Keep a gratitude journal. What makes me happy daily? What do I appreciate?
Make a list of three, five or ten things I can do that will improve my life and make me happy.
Program myself for success by visualizing my success and visualizing me accomplishing my goals. Visualize myself living with behaviors and habits that ensure my fitness, health and hotness.
Self-esteem comes from working for and earning my accomplishments. List some of them here and how it felt to succeed.
What are the excuses I use that keep me from reaching my goals? Why do I do that? What’s my pay-off? Using excuses to hold onto my current life, current fitness, current everything. Look at the consequences of continuing on this path: how does that look? How does that affect me? How does it affect the people in my life? Avoiding my issues, I avoid taking responsibility for my choices (past, present and future). Recognize that my excuses hold me back from what I really want to accomplish, from the life I want to live. Write down those excuses and look at them for what they are. Don’t buy into your own bullshit anymore.
Minor set-backs are part of the process and progress. How I handle them sets the tone for my success. Don’t get disappointed or discouraged so easily. Look at setbacks and my approach to them.
From an article Leslie emailed:
Steps back can take many forms: a family vacation, breaks in your routine, personal tragedies, injuries, or that lost weekend in front of the tube. A big mistake people make when trying to get healthier is that when they fall off a bit or something happens, they think they “have to start over”. Wrong! When missteps do happen, a better strategy is to simply take two steps forward. You’re still ahead of where you were before, far beyond the starting line.
The point is to just consistently win a few more points that you lose…With healthy eating and exercising, as long as you’re consistently out-stepping your steps back, you’re ahead of the game. If you expect perfection (and many of us do), you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and guilt.
Guilt can be debilitating to your healthy habits. When you mess up (or even when things are messed up for you), it’s natural to feel guilty. At that point, you have a choice: to let that guilt plummet you into a cycle that could spit you out worse off than before, or to accept the step back and say “where do I go from here?”
Of course, consistent success is still something to strive for. You don’t want to roller-coaster up and down. That’s an “old” habit, remember? And the 1step back two steps forward strategy doesn’t lessen the need to do your best. You should still work hard to keep those steps back from happening. But it helps to be prepared with a plan and a positive attitude for when they do happen.
Many times, this means a rededication, a refocusing, and a recommitment. You might want to look at your program and see why it’s allowing those landmines to stick around. Use it as a learning process. Ask how you can keep that misstep from happening again.
- Take a walk in the woods to clear your head and regroup.
- Have a personal “bounce back” motto that will re-energize you. Put it everywhere.
- Take a break if you think you’re trying too hard.
- Return to the basics. Are you making it too complicated and tough on yourself?
- Plan ahead for irregularities in your schedule, call ahead to healthy restaurants, pack healthy snacks
. - Stay aware of what you’re doing. One meal mess up can turn into a one day mess up, a one week mess up if you’re not careful.
- Remind yourself of your success so far when you need a boost.
Unlike people who run 10 miles today because they should have run two yesterday, “2 Steps Forward” doesn’t necessarily mean doing a lot more to make up for a blunder. Just make a commitment to do things as right as possible as much as you can.
