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10 pounds down 32 pounds to go!

Monday, June 04, 2007

"Don't worry, don't be nervous. Do what I do, just picture yourself naked."

i'm back and feeling all perky. a chilled out vacation was a good thing. i did a lot of cooking (note: making sushi is hard), not as much eating as i thought and getting in more exercise than i thought possible. and i get to keep my gold medal in maintaining as i'm back here at 169. i didn't do much of "the dieting" while i was gone. it would have been a bit too difficult to restrict while hanging around my house baking and watching movies and rearranging my furniture. but i had a good week and i felt really good about everything i did, even if i do spend every vacation thinking i could be making better use of my time. i have a little trouble embracing the true meaning of the word. from now on i'm working on embracing the true meaning of vacation, translated directly from the latin as "chill the fuck out".

so i mentioned that i had some really good runs last week. it was way better than good. they were amazing. the kind of runs where you can't actually breath but your legs just won't stop because they're that happy. i honestly never knew i could do that and i'm stunned and amazed and even a little worried that it won't last. and it sort of got me wondering about my running and my motivation and all that stuff. i've been "running" for most of my time doing "the dieting". until recently it's only been as a tool of the weightloss, not because i really wanted to. i ran when i could as much as i could to burn more calories. i never really got good at it, or even wanted to. it was like running the mile in gym class; hard, embarrassing, an emotional hurdle aswell as physical.

i wasn't motivated to do it, i did it because i had to. that's more or less how i feel about weightloss as a whole. it wasn't like i woke up one day ready to fix my life. i woke up one day and couldn't go on being broken. maybe in some lights that's the same thing, but not for me. PQ has said some things about motivation and weightloss, that was weeks ago but i'm in that time warp that happens when you go away and expect to come back where you left off so forgive me. it's true though, when you get to that point where your life is ticking by and you're not living it and you decide to do something...that's not motivation. that's the end of the line. i don't buy lowfat cheese because i'm motivated, i do it because i have to. same for exercise.

i do the things i have to do and i do them regularly enough that they've become habits but it's nothing to do with motivation. it's hard work. and routine. if you're waiting to get motivated you're just feeding yourself excuses. which is fine, it's a big chunk of the process. none of us would be here if we didn't do our time with excuses. when you're ready, you do it. no one wakes up one day running marathons and eating whole grain yogurt smoothies for every meal when they only had remote controls and big macs the day before. i really think motivation as a concept is built only to make people feel bad about what they're not accomplishing. we get enough of that on our own i think.

4 comments:

teebopop said...

This is definitely one of the BEST posts you've ever written. Totally.

Amy said...

i should come back from vacation more often!

Anonymous said...

Yeah I agree about how great this post is. I am working on a post that is similar to your last paragraph. You rock for writing that, btw!

Amy said...

you guys are sweethearts!