Keep moving!

(I am crossposting a variation of this today on both of my blogs, A Fat Girl & A Fat Horse and Love it, then lose it., because I think it needs to be said on both a healthy lifestyle vein and also the horsey vein!)

I love these little tidbits that I get everyday from SparkPeople.com in my email - they are almost always applicable to the personal emotional journey that I am on in addition to my weight loss journey. This showed up in my email this morning:

Be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid only of standing still.
- Chinese Proverb

I am choosing to take this one both literally and figuratively - in many respects.

On the weight loss front, I have not moved down on the scale in quite a long time - when I do see progress in a downward direction, it is very small and usually short lived, despite trying my best to keeping working out and keep eating well - sometimes, I slip up and eat something that I know full stop is bad for me, but I figure "since I'm not going down anyways, I can allow myself this." - this is a mindset that I need to get rid of completely. I used to be very good at discerning if I actually wanted to eat something that was bad for me because I wanted it or because it was convenient. 9/10 times, I could turn away from the Snickers bar or the piece of pizza because I knew the only reason I wanted it was because it was there, and so was I, and I wouldn't have that chance again later.

I know that eating right is good for me - it feels good - most of the time it tastes good - and it gives my body the correct fuel for the physical activity that I have been engaging in. I still am conscious of how to eat clean - I am going to continue to go - getting moving again. I feel like the above quote needs to go hand in hand with "fall down seven times, get up eight" - some wise words of wisdom for this whole journey.

On a personal level, sometimes the things I want in life take some time to come to fruition - ie right now, my living situation is kind of at a standstill as we wait for G to get the call for training - that can be frustrating - but every day that passes is a day closer to it - I need to remember that even if things are not going at the speed I want them to go - they are still moving, and I am the only one responsible for allowing them to stop.

I am a great one for getting some good steam going - a quick pace, and then burning out. I'm talking about various aspects of my life, really - weight loss, emotional issues, riding, career... Because going slow is scary. Being behind everyone is terrifying for me. I am used to excelling at life, being competitive and good at most things that I put my mind to.

When I graduated from high school, I decided to take a year off to work and then go back to university to complete my BSW specializing in Child Welfare. By the time I got back to university, I was already a year behind all of the friends I had graduated with - my mother graciously suggested, since I did not have enough of a student loan to both keep my apartment and pay my tuition and so would have to work through the school year, that I take part time courses. I didn't want to be any farther behind my friends, so I insisted on taking a full course load and working full time - to get to my goal faster.

The disadvantage to this is that I was so caught up in getting to my destination that I missed a lot of the journey. (For those wondering, student loan pulled all of my finding because I had worked too much and I ended up burning out and dropping out of university and haven't been back since - now I am way more than just 1 year behind my friends!)


KEEP MOVING, DON'T QUIT.