What in the world am I talking about? I am saying that in no way shape or form am I aming for perfection in this journey that I am on. It’s not a sustainable concept or mission on life for me and probably not for most people! Life happens and life is definitely NOT perfect. So why do we expect our diet and health plans to always be perfect?
I tried the perfect route before! Over and over! I’ve drawn lines in the sand and said ‘this is it’ time and time again! I have also had incredible success with the “let’s be perfect route” on this healthy journey! One look at these pictures and you can see the success!
I achieved that success with total restriction! Seriously, I remember days where I would have a perfect day and get to the end of my day with some calories (ww points) still left and I would reward myself...with a small glass of grape juice! Seriously? Grape juice as a reward??? I was striving for perfection.
While perfection DID work...it wasn’t sustainable!!! Just look at my current picture and that is proven!!!
What happened???? Life happened!!! I reached my goals and felt so amazing...but life happened. I went on vacation I had busy days at work. I had a crumbling marriage. Injuries. You name it...but to sum it up...life happened!! And perfection wasn’t as easily or even possible to achieve and I stumbled...I stumbled big time!
This time around I’m allowing and even accepting failure. It will happen. So why not embrace it and figure out ways to keep failure at a minimum? But how??
The main thing is that I’m not setting any major goals in terms of weight I will lose each week/month/year. My goal for January was to be less on the scales. If that was one measly ounce...awesome it would be less!!! I’m committed to tracking every bite I eat! With such easy and loose ‘goals’, I’m allowing for failure! I can eat what I want....I just have to track it! Somehow the simple act of tracking my food works for me in that being cognizant and aware of the food going into my mouth has made me very willing to keep it under control and stay within a set caloric range! But the freedom of not vowing to stay within that range and having to lose weight gives me the freedom to be completely honest with myself when it comes to tracking. I don’t ‘forget’ to put in something that I ate. I don’t ‘accidentally’ misjudge my portion sizes. I just put it down in black and white and it’s ok if I fail for the day. Ironically enough...on Monday I was sure I went over that range of calories...but I was determined to be utterly honest and track it regardless! I allowed myself the room for ‘failure’ in my eating....I embraced the fact that I will falter. And by embracing it, I took away the ‘I messed up’ mentality and turned it into a complete victory!!!
As a side note, I was sure I totally blew my numbers on Monday. But when I did go in and track...even though I messed up, I found that I was really not that far off ...maybe 30 calories over!! How many times have I given up and gone off track for days or even weeks and months in the past because I thought that I had blown it by eating too much?? It has happened over and over because I wanted and expected perfection and when perfection didn’t happen (even just in my mind) I gave up in disgusted failure! But how many times could it have been like Monday where I was sure I messed up and if I just would have tracked found that I was actually doing well??? This time I embraced the possibility of failure and found that I really didn’t fail at all!!!
Embrace it...because failure WILL happan!
