I’m back. I know its been awhile since I posted anything and I’m feeling a little guilty that I let my labor of love drift off into cyberspace. In any case, I went on vacation and totally lost focus on my goals for my body and also for my blog. I came back from vacation and feel lost, completely out of my rhythm and wondering how to get my focus back. I actually feel depressed, so I’m glad I’m blogging today.

On my vacation, of course I ate too much, drank too much, got too much sun. On a good note, I did jog in the morning everyday except one, so that helped keep my weight in check.

When I got back from vacation, I weighed in at 127lbs. One week later, I’m back down to 121lbs without really trying and with only exercising twice  this week for 10minutes at a clip. So weight-wise, I’m not really up, but my spirit is down.

My husband is staring down the barrel of losing his job again, so I’m anxious and wondering what we’re going to do. Candy at work has once again been a negative coping mechanism.

I’m realizing though, that I need to commit to my goals, even when it gets hard. Looking at my life, I’d have to say that I’ve never really reached my potential in terms of body, career and finances and it all has to do with commitment. Commitment is scary. What if you throw every bone of effort into reaching your goals and it doesn’t work? There are no guarantees. What if you sacrifice things that you know and love, that are comfortable to you – only to find out that you sacrificed in vain? I think I’ve kept my heart-felt goals and desires at arms length, trying to diminish their importance in my life for fear that I don’t have what it takes to achieve them and therefore I never fully commit myself to reaching them. How’s that for deep?

In any case, where I’m going with this is that to achieve the body that I want, I need to commit my heart, mind and body to taking the steps everyday to reach my goals.

Here’s a quote that I like

The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating — in work, in play, in love – Anne Morris

Commitment makes decisions easy. The decisions either fall in line with your goals or not. Commitment boils everything down to black and white. So, the next time I pass that candy dish or decide that I’m not going to work out, I need to ask myself if those decisions help me reach my goals. Sounds easy enough, but then emotions get in the way. If it weren’t for emotions, I probably would be totally ripped and a multi-millionaire. I once read a Zen quote that was something to the effect

The path is smooth, don’t throw rocks in it.

The logical steps to take to reach a goal, somehow get tangled up in my emotional ocean. If I can put the emotions in their place then I’m golden.

Thanks for reading.

Last week, I was out of steam – mentally and physically. I realized I had reached a plateau and had lost my motivation. I also realized that if I didn’t re-capture that motivation that I wouldn’t be able to make more progress.

So, I read some articles on moving past plateaus and decided to change two things: 1. my diet and 2. my workout.

I re-introduced starchy complex carbs into my diet: brown rice mixed with chickpeas, sweet potato and oatmeal.

I also focused more on lifting weights to build muscle instead of my usual aerobic activity with a little bit of weight lifting.

At the end of the week, I feel great and motivated to continue. I weighed in at 124lb and my thigh measurements were down a bit. Left thigh was about 20.75″ and my right was on the nose at 21″.

I just looked at my stats page and the last time I weighed in at 124lb was on  5/2/09, so I haven’t really made much progress during the past month, but I feel that now that instead of being at the end of my rope, I’m at the beginning and feel fresh, motivated and ready to start again.

So, I’m excited to see what next week’s ‘Week in Review’ will be with my new found motivation.

Thanks for reading!