Support and Accountability

“I am the only person responsible for my results”

This has become my new mantra. How easy it is for us to kid ourselves.. to think just one won’t hurt. Or to say I don’t care today I’m stressed so I am gonna comfort myself, one day won’t hurt. And then you find it spiraling into over indulgence and yet another week down the drain.

I have been spinning my wheels for 15 years. I have gone from not caring to caring to half hearted to down right ocd. And where has it got me? zilch.

I have read so many books, looked at so many diets, mangled my brain over the right mental attitudes and tricks. I have started afresh with new found determination over and over again.

Where am I? No further than when I started. Learned a lot yes, but it seems I always missed that crucial lesson. I keep looking for the answer, for the new trick, the new tip. And it’s sitting right under my nose all along.

Me..

I am the only one who can decide to make this work, I am the only one putting food in my mouth or choosing not to exercise.

Eat less, move more. Stop kidding myself that one won’t hurt. Plan my indulgences, don’t let them just happen.

That’s not to say no one can help, I finally hired a personal trainer to do just that. Someone who can beat me up when I misbehave (and I know she can as she goes to my Jiu-Jitsu school) . Beth is a prime example of what I want to look like, she has a fantastic figure, is strong and lean not just skinny. She can throw the weight around with the best of the guys and she can do unassisted pullups (one of my own personal goals). I have always highly respected her abilities in training sessions so I finally bit the bullet and asked for her help professionally instead of just oddball chats here and there.

I am starting once a week with her on Friday nights after work. I figure she can help me work out some of my weaknesses that don’t get addressed in the more generic group classes, like my inability to do a real pushup or hold my feet straight out at 2 feet off the ground let alone 6″. I suspect there is going to be a lot of core and upper body work

I’m also looking forward to it as a way to measure progress. John’s circuit training classes are awesome but we rarely do the same thing twice so it’s hard to really measure progress on a weekly basis. ‘Getting fitter’ is a bit too vague for me I’d like to see my bench press weights steadily improving or number of squats in a minute etc improve.

I have been behaving myself for the last 3 days nutritionally, well mostly, I did have some crawfish cheese dip at lunch on Monday (along with my salad) but I adjusted my dinner to account for the additional calories and that was my only slip for the day. I have totally banned myself from any cream or sugar in my coffee. It’s the start of a slippery slope for me.

I’ll wait to see what Beth suggests before I make any other drastic changes. I’m not sure if she is going to go in depth to my nutrition or just give me some guidelines. She gave me an awesome price so I suspect it might be just straight training. If it is I will probably ask if I can upgrade to the ‘delux’ package