Sunday, October 28, 2012
Patience, Measurements, and Food Excuses
I met with trainer Brandon this morning. As I handed him a picture of me from the spring of 2010, I said, "This is how it started 2 years ago." Brandon is keeping the picture because he says it will come in handy in the future. He said, "That's a big change." So we did thirty minutes of upper body today. Next week will be our sixth workout so Brandon has promised we are going to measure again. About two sets after he made this announcement, I said, "What if I haven't made any progress? I'm nervous." "I'm nervous too." I gave him a weird look, I'm sure. I was thinking...nervous? why is the trainer nervous? I told him, "Look if I'm going to be nervous that's one thing. One of us has to be strong so that's going to be you." We then went over what I would be eating for the rest of the week. Knowing that the tape measure is coming out on Saturday morning and that body fat tester thing a ma jig! I will be eating ONLY what I'm supposed to eat and for sure six times a day. I was pretty happy this morning because the scales had gone down two pounds. Brandon isn't as worried about the number on the scale as I am. He is more concerned with body fat numbers, and inches. I should be concerned with what Brandon is concerned with too. However, I can look at the number on the scale more frequently. This is when I told Brandon I was getting frustrated. I can see these big changes I've made, but at the same time I have so far to go. I look in the mirror and there are parts that just don't make me happy. Brandon told me I need to work on being patient. PATIENT???? Obviously, he doesn't know me very well yet. Patience is not one of my strengths. Bottom Line: I will probably be increasingly nervous as the week begins to approach Saturday morning. I WANT RESULTS!
With that being said, I did wear a pair of jeans to work on Friday which were a size smaller than the ones I had been wearing. It's a GREAT feeling to be able to continually downsize your clothes. Just today I cleaned out two bags of clothes that are far too big to wear. My husband was laughing that we could have used a pair of the pants as a tent.
People have been asking what I eat for my six meals a day. I usually start out with a protein bar. Although, I'm switching that to oatmeal this week. My mid morning snack is a greek yogurt. Following that I have chicken and a vege for lunch, then a couple of hours later I eat an apple with some peanut butter, my afternoon snack is usually a hand full of almonds. For dinner, I eat a protein with a vegetable. Now, I've only truly done this for one week. I spent three weeks complaining and making excuses. Like last week when I met with Brandon and he asked me how the eating had been going and I said, "I have been sick this week so the eating hasn't been good." He said, "What does hasn't been good mean?" I said, "Epic fail. I didn't have an appetite so I didn't eat. It wasn't that I made bad choices as far as what food I did eat. I just didn't eat a lot. Brandon looked me in the eye and said, "Sweetheart, you are preaching to the choir. I used to have to eat 7,000 calories a day. I would go to bed and my jaw would hurt because I had chewed so much meat. Sometimes, I had to force myself to eat because nothing sounded good and I didn't want to eat because I wasn't hungry." Well...I guess he just put my excuses to rest. As I was trying to process what he had said, he spoke again, "I don't care if you have to force yourself to eat. You eat six times a day. You eat your 1200 calories. You eat your hundred grams of protein and don't have more than a hundred carbs." At this moment, I realized Brandon is really really serious about eating. You might think I'm being sarcastic, I'm not. The reality is when I worked out with Mike, he told me what to eat and it was so outrageous that I struggled with it. We were getting results so as long I didn't eat ridiculous food it was ok. We also didn't talk about food regularly. We were much more focused on the workouts. When I worked out with Kelly she told me what to eat at our first session and then we didn't talk about it again. (SSSHHHHHH...no accountability for me there.) Food has been such a battle for me my whole life that I'm scared of it. I feel like if you don't eat enough you won't lose weight. If you eat too much you gain weight. I can never figure out the balance. Brandon is teaching me the balance and he's also holding me accountable. Here's the other thing that I'm just now figuring out as I'm typing this right now...throughout these two and a half years of my getting fit journey I've still made excuses for food. Now, I'm getting really good at saying, "No. I don't eat cake, or no I'm not eating that." I don't worry that I'm offending someone because my health is more important than their feelings. (Truthfully, if someone gets their feelings hurt because you aren't eating their food...that's a whole other issue that I'm glad I don't have to worry about. I can't imagine having hurt feelings because I cooked something and someone said they didn't want any, BUT we all know there are those out there who walk around in a fragile state most of the time.)So I'm getting good at saying no, but I'm still making excuses. Excuses such as: "I didn't feel well enough to eat." or "I'm too busy to eat six times a day. I'll eat as much as I can." I think that Brandon is good enough at what he does and he's probably worked with a lot of people like me and he knew they were excuses even when I didn't! AHA! Wow...sometimes this blog surprises me so much because I figure things out while writing it. He knew that I was making excuses. I didn't know it then, but I do now. This is really really big for me.
I still waiver on going to the gym in the mornings. It's nice to get it out of the way, but I am not a morning person. I feel like I do a much better workout in the evenings. However, I will go when I have to.
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The purpose of this blog is to share my journey to a healthy lifestyle with others. Losing weight has been a battle my entire life. I had an eye opening and life changing event which propelled me to take action. Come and join me on this journey. We will laugh, cry, celebrate, and learn. And in the end, we WILL beat the bulge.
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