All: Enquiring minds wanted to know so I thought I'd update you. The journey is going well. I'm down 10.2 lbs as of Monday! The Couch to 5k is going well. Hard, but well. I'm accomplishing my goals!! That always feels good. Here is an article I wrote for military.com this month. I thought I'd share.
-Tara
By the standards I have set for myself, I am a successful person. I married the love of my life, and we have a very healthy marriage. I have an amazing family with two beautiful children. We have two very cute dogs and a rotten cat. We have a nice historic home nestled on an Army post with more than enough belongings to be comfortable. My husband proudly serves our country and our family stands beside him in our own type of service as well. We make enough money to pay our bills and have a few extras. My children are intelligent beings who are growing like weeds. I am living my dream of working from home and have cofounded a successful business that allows me to feel as though I am contributing not only to the Army community but in addition, to my family (both monetarily and with my time). So, I say again, by my standards, I’m a success. Well, maybe.
There has always been this nagging goal of mine that I never have quite reached. Oh, I can reach a goal. Ask anyone. Put something in front of me and tell me that I cannot do it. Those are like magic words that light a fire in the belly of my soul that make me more motivated than you can imagine. But no matter what I did there was one goal I never conquered. That goal was losing weight. I never understood it, still don’t most days, why I can conquer most everything else. I have no fear when it comes to business or people. I am a very open person who shares most everything with anyone who will listen. I’m not afraid to ask. That one thing though – losing weight – the gym, the food, the fear of losing it all just to gain it back, even the “money spent” on new clothes was the largest mountain in my head. A mountain that up until last month I had only journeyed once, and failed.
I haven’t always been heavy so it was a natural progression. One baby, two, and you know the drill - too many Oreos and not enough movement. It’s not that I didn’t know where the weight came from or why it was still there. And it’s not like I didn’t know how to get rid of it. I had rationalized it out to fear of the mountain and that I just must not “want it bad enough”. I think I just needed a little inspiration and that’s exactly what the universe gave me. After being inspired by one of my good friends who has lost over 40 pounds and seeing how good she feels I began to think about why I would like to feel and look that way too. Have you ever had the experience, for instance, where you buy a green car and then all you see is the same green car on the road but you never noticed it before? All of the sudden all of the signs pointed to weight loss. I was surrounded by people talking about the gym, people who had lost a lot of weight, and people who were reaching personal goals. Being the goal oriented person that I am I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to conquer this fear, or at least start on some journey towards it.
I am a planner. So the first thing I decided to do was form a plan. I have a large tendency to see the big picture but have a hard time chipping away at the smaller goals to get there. The big picture was my mountain, and that mountain scared the hell out of me. It was very unrealistic that I would wake up one morning and stop eating French fries and go run a marathon. I realize this. I adopted the rule that we have to take this one molehill at a time, and I planned those small hills. I think they call that eating the elephant in small chunks right? I knew I didn’t want to change things so drastically that I would quit. I had to make small, measurable, and realistic changes to my life. Changes I could stick to for the long run.
I wrote my plan down (I even added a plan B) and put into motion the process that would lead me up the mountain.
They say to accomplish any goal that you have to have a burning desire for success and the commitment to the goal. Perhaps, in retrospect, that was what was missing. Though I would challenge that theory, I don’t know that I started off with a burning desire. It has been the small accomplishments along the way from which I gained confidence to form the burning desire for success. And those accomplishments led me to become more committed to my mountain. The fear of failure was so big that success seemed unlikely. When I learned that I could be successful at the small chunks of the elephant the entire elephant seemed much more manageable.
I start off my day every day asking myself what one thing I am capable of achieving toward my mountain.
Part of my plan includes an accountability statement. Fact of the matter is for me to remain motivated I have to remain accountable to someone other than myself. I know this about myself. I needed someone who loved me enough to support me but didn’t love me so much that it would hurt them to tell me I had to keep going when I really wanted to quit. Everyone needs a cheerleader, or a cheering section for that matter. I needed help and someone who would conquer the fears of the gym & the discovery of the healthy eating with me. I referenced my Army life and the times I have had hard times and needed help (deployment anyone?). Immediately, I considered it time for a “battle buddy”.
Battle buddy in tow, I ask myself what do I want to prove to others that I am capable of accomplishing?
Have I accomplished my goal? Not yet. I’m still working on the hills. Every time I think of the mountain it scares me, even now. These little changes though have become habit. When I see completion of one, then two, then three hills I know (and yes I do have to tell myself this all the time) that the mountain can be trekked. One day I’ll turn around at the top of the mountain and I’ll look down along the journey that it took to get there and I can be proud of everything I’ve accomplished. It won’t beat me, I am a success.
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