Day 20, Monday: Get real. Share Something you’re struggling with right now.
This is me last summer and fall while eating paleo, doing strength training, and taking coconut oil. |
One hundred and five. That is neither the current temperature nor my weight. It signifies how many days I have successfully blogged in a row without fail. Although you’ll see blog posts on here as far back as 2005, blogging as I have in the recent months is a new thing for me. It is no longer about just showing photo updates of my kids to my family. I went from 5 readers in January to over a 170 in May. Through finding my purpose in blogging I have found my voice. To have blogged every day since Monday the fourth of February is a big deal for me. I have successful done something every day for three full months.
However that is not always the case in my life. Perhaps it’s my continual transitional life that has programmed myself to constantly start things without always seeing the end.
Which leads me to the subject of the prompt. I have been struggling recently with commitment to exercise and eating cleanly. I’m very great at starting an exercise regime and do great and planning to stick to paleo. I can do a couple of weeks and then I usually miss a day which somehow leads to a long enough ‘break’ that Im back to finding the commitment again to start all over.
I have had good streaks in the past. I was doing great last summer/fall while temporarily stuck at my in-laws for a few months. Perhaps because exercise and food were the only two things I could control in my life at that point while being treated and controlled like a sixteen year old by people who like to control and step in when I parent. I was sticking to paleo and was concentrating on weight training and interval training to lose fat and tone up. I have quite a boyish figure and I somehow was transforming my body to have a waistline and the appearance of curvy hips. My husband, who was back at home in England, saw photos of my progress and cheered me on.
However I have now gotten into a rut of not exercising. While my diet is void of fast food, pre-packaged food filled with preservatives, sodas, and junk food it is not strictly paleo. I do eat fats, but the good kind. Meaning nothing that says ‘low’ or ‘non’ in front of it. However thats not only what I have been eating as of late. Abs are made in the kitchen an I have covered mine quite well recently a lot of white flour, white rice, white potatoes and white sugar. I used to not even have sugar in my house but bought it for baking and then let it slowly creep into my meals because the lazy side of me thought it was easier than getting a spoonful of honey. The other white ingredients have been reintroduced and used more out of necessity while things have been a bit tighter around her financially. My typical paleo breakfast of eggs, bacon, avocado, blood pudding, and tomato got replaced with porridge that I started eating with my kids.
I’m not overweight. I am glad I have a much healthier body image than when I was growing up. However I am now carrying extra weight in fat in my mid section. Since I have had two kids via csection that means I have harder work ahead of me with rebuilding my abs. After being a slave to the scale with horrific eating habits in the past It’s not my weight in numbers that upsets me. I know a number on the scale cannot tell me how much fat I lost and how much muscle I have gained, since muscle weighs more than fat. All extra ‘fat’ weight goes straight to my tummy and the way my clothes are fitting right now upsets me. Especially because I know from experience that even if I had not worked out at all, but had done strict paleo, I would be looking at a flat stomach right now. I have done the vegetarian and vegan things many times before and have done the extreme limiting of ‘calories’. What I can tell from results is both get me ‘skinny fat’ and eating a paleo diet of meat and veggies with good fats like bacon and avocado and eating way more colories that way has gotten me skinny toned. While my younger self stressed over the scale of being a perfect 100 and fitting in my size zero jeans, I just want to to toned with muscle with as little body fat as possible. I do not care what number the scale says, what size clothes I fit in, or how many calories I am consuming. But results do not come without action.
That is what I am currently struggling with and what I hope to over come.
With my vow renewal only two and a half months away in August I know I need to start working harder if I want to see change.
I have blogged every day for 105 days, certainly I could stick to getting my body in shape before 02.08.13, yeah?
Q: Any advice or motivation you can give me that had worked for you?