Steady As She Goes

So.  I just quit the gym.  I haven't been since probably February and it was a very liberating experience.  This isn't as controversial as it might sound, given that I now do power yoga 6 times a week and largely I quit the gym for cost savings.  But still, it seemed significant enough that I wanted to write about it.

Probably what I really want to write about it how hard it is to maintain fitness.  I still get people asking me about losing weight, and honestly, it's hard to be encouraging sometimes.  For me, losing weight was the easy part.  Why?  Because it was successful and measurable.  As the pounds were shed, you could literally tick off small victories each week, hell, sometimes each day!  The weight-loss process became a series of WINS!

The weight maintenance phase, however, feels like it has few concrete results.  Muscle gain is excruciatingly, incrementally slow.  Plus, since muscle weighs more than fat (please no one disabuse me of this if it isn't true), the scale starts going in the "wrong" direction.  You lose the compliments of people praising your changing body, because your thin body is the new normal.  We are attuned to praise acts of change, but largely ignore acts of stability.

Harder still is the act of balance.  I am particularly good at elimination dieting, like telling myself I can only eat 2,300 calories a day, saying I'm not allowed dessert or alcohol, or never buying animal crackers (I loooooove animal crackers).  After many months of that, you start to get bored; you start to wonder how much fun life will be if you never have another beer or Pop Tart.  So I stopped counting calories, allowed myself booze again, and have had a Pop Tart or two in the past few months.

Allowing myself to eat those treats again didn't fill me with the glee it was supposed to.  Now I just feel guilty.  And I lost all the definition in my midsection that was starting.

Now I think I'm at a bit of a crossroads, mostly, if not entirely, relating to my self-perception.  Can I, for the first time, stop assessing my physical condition on what it isn't and focus better on what it is?  Can I look past the bulges hovering over the waistband of my jeans and just say, "fuck it" and move on?

I think I can.

I keep getting a friends reaching out and asking how I came this far.  The hard part is, truthfully, I don't really know.  It felt like the right time to get off the couch and move.  It felt better to adjust my eating than keep eating the things that weren't helping my body.  It felt better to do, than to make an excuse to not.  If I can say anything of advice, it would be to start something.  Do a thing for a minute.  Turn that minute into two, and so on.  You won't run a mile in a week, nor will you stop craving sugar tomorrow.  Think about what you're eating when you eat it.  Am I hungry, or is this habit?  Do I really need this much or is this just what I'm used to ordering?  Swap one thing for another thing, but just one.  Eat the burger without the fries, just to start.  Enjoy every damn bite of that burger.  Work your way to grilled chicken from there.

And if I take my own advice, I should remind myself to keep moving forward even if I don't have HUGE victories to celebrate.  Maybe this week I'm going to pat myself on the back for holding Crow pose for seconds longer than I did last time.  Maybe this week I'll swap out pita chips for carrot sticks just once.  Maybe this week I'll finish those Pop Tarts in the kitchen and forbid myself to feel guilty for it.

I think that's why we all struggle to be adults, honestly.  There are no awards for a beautifully balanced checkbook, other than the satisfaction of knowing you've done your best.