On Falling Down

Since I began this journey, I’ve fallen down many, many times.  Some days I fall down more than once.

My biggest issue still lies with food.  While the hemp hearts trial netted a 4 pound weight loss last week, I ran out of them and went two days without them and felt sluggish and down – which is also in line with some stressful stuff that happened too so I’m not sure if my energy level was the lack of hemp hearts or if my stress levels were up.

This past Sunday and Monday, things were not going my way at all and without going into huge detail, life had really kicked me in the balls.  Despite going to my favorite class, Zumba, Monday morning, I spent much of yesterday afternoon worrying, frustrated, and unfocused.

And I fell down, hard.  I binged. Even though I had planned a healthy dinner, I didn’t cook it.  Monday night dinner was raw broccoli, potato chips, 4 cookies with milk, and a midnight snack of a bowl of cereal with white sugar on top  – things I haven’t had in months.  Needless to say I felt like absolute shit by the end of it!

Beastie Boys’ Sabotage was playing in my head the whole time.  I’m not even kidding.  When I feel this way, I turn to this song to wake me up and pull me out before I do serious damage.

I had visions of gaining back all the weight, or never going to the gym again, of eating what I wanted when I wanted and finally, of the unhealthy, grumpy version of me that I once was.  I felt guilty, scared and angry with myself.  I was at a scary low.

Finally I stopped the anger train and thought about the stress that had caused me to eat my emotions away.  I knew exactly why I had done what I had done.

I held that ball of stress in my hands, rolling it over my palms and examining it’s particles.  I pulled it apart slowly, like taffy, and soon had smaller bits, smaller issues, lined up in a row.

I tackled the problems I could when I was done putting them into their own Mental Tupperware, and made plans to work on the things I couldn’t accomplish before bed last night.  I also let a couple of the insignificant issues slide.  I had to decide which parts of this burden were worth re-visiting, worth putting energy into, and decided that some of them were not worth the time required to think about them.  I trashed a few issues knowing they were not part of my ultimate life goals and walked away.

While everything isn’t back to peachy yet, I’m working on these things, one little piece at a time, in manageable bites.

It’s so easy to fall down.  It’s so easy to slip back into the comfort of {insert your sinful food here}.

I do it – usually just a stumble here and there, but sometimes a fall is so quick, so unexpected, it’s difficult to pick yourself up from the ground and remind yourself why you’re doing all of this.

So when you fall, pick yourself back up.  Take the time to dissect why you fell, but don’t dwell on the actual fall and beat yourself up.  Move forward with new knowledge on how to handle a stumble next time, and maybe your smarter brain and stronger legs will carry you back up before you even hit the ground.