Of Bull Fights and Consistency

Weight loss sometimes makes you feel like the little red cape in a bull fight....maybe the matador remains unscathed, but no matter how much it flutters and twists around trying to avoid it, the poor little cloth gets beaten by the bulls horns every time.

Every one who has attempted weight loss has experienced this at some point. You work your butt off. You count your calories. You shake and stretch and move in ways you didn't have any idea your body could. But then......you get on the scale. And it hasn't moved an inch. Or even worse, you're stabbed by those bull horns by gaining weight.

Now certainly, sometimes it's deserved. A little too much dinner, an extra cookie, only staying 15 minutes on the elliptical when you were planning on doing 45. But sometimes, the calories just don't add up. You did have a calorie deficit every single day, you did do every workout, you did stay on point nutritionally. And still you get a disappointing number.

Here's where we each have a choice.

We can cry, whine, have a pity party, wonder why we even bother, or worse, quit.

Or, we can take a step back and look at the big picture...at the virtue of consistency.

This is what I learned a few days ago. I've had several disappointing weeks this summer. It was especially frustrating because I took the summer off my job and made weight loss my job for 3 months. I worked my tail off. And when I didn't see the scale go down, I was pretty darn upset.

I never came close to quitting, but John had to sit through many many many rants about how I didn't deserve this, how my work wasn't paying off, about why wasn't the "calorie in, calorie out" formula working. I felt like the bull had skewered me for a reward, and I felt like it had pooped on me too.
*If you want one such example of said rant, go read Grrrr....Stupid Scale!! from a few days ago.

My "ahh-hah" moment happened when I posted all of my weigh-ins since starting in June (Here: Weigh-In's). It was the first time in probably 2 months that I had looked at my progress all together. And here's what I realized:

I have been way more consistent than I felt. Out of 22 weeks, I only gained weight 2 weeks, and had no change 2 weeks, since June. And two of those weeks were because of dear Aunt Flo.

The consistency that I have proved to myself is way more important and significant than any one week of seemingly failure. I have lost 33 pounds since June 1st...and that is something I am proud of! I will not stab myself over and over because I feel like my body isn't giving me what it's supposed to on any one given week. Because the fact is, I am losing weight. And I am doing it consistently. And that is what will get me to my goal. 

One week is not going to thwart my reaching my goal. Unless I quit. Unless I let it get me down. Unless I choose to let it overwhelm the many many many other weeks that I have done well.

And I choose not to. I choose to let the the truth of my consistency free me to be confident that even if I have an "off week", the next week, or the one after that, will be better. Because the changes that I am making, those will work. I just have to be consistent.