Even though my life seems to be going well on the outside lately, something felt off. I’m a fortunate person. Nothing is wrong. I love my work, I have amazing friends, and I love sharing fitness these days. However, I let myself get obsessed and bogged down searching for something I found a long time ago. I was using all my spare energy on this rather than on improving myself. It’s time for me to take that energy back and use it on what I can control. If you’re someone struggling with motivation to achieve a certain goal, I challenge you evaluate what you dedicate energy to and ask if it’s the best use of it.
I took the full day on Saturday to ask myself both what I need and what I want right now. I wracked my brain for several hours (and Friday night) trying to figure out what it was. I made a mind map. I watched TED talks. I did yoga. I rolled around on the floor. One TED talk said that we have neurons in our gut, and somehow this means we should trust it. This sounds silly, but I was desperate. The more I let go of my obsessive need to “figure it out,” the more grounded I became. I realized that I knew what I wanted all along and it was never that complicated. I was already dedicating my energy to it in all the wrong ways. It’s not in my control to get what I want right now, but it’s in my control to become a better version of myself, that I can be genuinely happy with, until I can have that.
The bottom line is that I’m taking back my energy and forcing myself to use it for personal growth. I’m a high energy person, but I’m stubborn and I do what I want even when I know it’s not what’s best for me. It’s a challenge in itself to get myself to do what’s best for me and understand that I’m going to feel worse before I feel better.
I knew something was off in my mind, but my eating habits were just as telling. More and more, I find that my bad eating habits arise out of imbalance or a deeper issue. I lose control over one thing and suddenly don’t want to control my eating. When isn’t it about eating for me? How can I fix this?
For the time being, I’ll focus on macros. I’ll be logging everything in the 1st Phorm app and posting it to my close friends story each day. How am I going to keep my macros? I need to standardize what I’m eating as much as possible so that I’m not leaving myself room to stray. I still want to enjoy food, but I need to put less emphasis on it. I’m focused on hitting my protein (125g) and calories (12 cal/lb bodyweight for now) and trusting that proper carbs and fat come with it.
Breakfast: Skim latte (130 cal; 8g protein); Walnuts (5g protein; 220 calories)
Snack: Greek yogurt (110 cal, 14g protein)
Lunch: Chicken Sandwich (13g protein, 220 calories)
Snack: Level-1 Protein Shake (link in Instagram bio) (150 cal, 23g protein) OR Phormula-1 and Ignition (160 cal, 25g protein)
Dinner: Vegetable (100-200 cal); some kind of pasta (180 cal, ~13g protein), protein (200 cal, 25g protein)
Dessert: Smoothie (100 cal) and granola (150 cal) OR apple (95 cal) and peanut butter (70 cal; 8g protein)
I’m the kind of person that eats most of my daily calories at dinner. I need to be careful about this because the body can only absorb ~30 grams of protein at once and I want to make sure I get the benefit of all of it. As much as it sucks, this will take time to get used to and I will be bloated from increased protein intake for some period of time. It’s uncomfortable, but I have the most success when I’m okay with not being perfect from day to day. I’ll be honest. I probably gained a whole pound yesterday from a binge. I hate the way I feel right now. I had a hard time with the number on the scale and dress shopping today. Again, I can’t focus on this. I’m not going to see results tomorrow, or next week. I will slowly start to feel better about myself until I see the results one day.
Depending on how I’m feeling, I can experiment with eating the pasta earlier in the day or spacing out the time between eating the pasta and the carb. There are so many foods I love and I need to remind myself that it doesn’t mean I’m never going to eat them. I will eat all of the foods that I love sometime soon—maybe it will even be on the menu for next week.
I’m motivated in this moment, so it’s easy for me to make all these promises to myself. It’s like I said in my video, if I could do steps 1-10 right now, I would, but I can’t. This takes work and time and struggle and energy and everything in between. If I’m not willing to give that, then I haven’t earned the results.
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