My New Normal

Tomorrow I have my monthly weigh-in and measurement session with my trainer. And for the first time since I started this journey back in September, I am scared. I don't think it was a good month.

I've been thinking all day about how I got off track. I guess what is strange to me is how easily it happened. Now don't get me wrong, I haven't leaped face first off a building into a large peanut butter cup Blizzard. But I have gotten complacent.

I have still been working out but maybe not quite as hard. I think I am in a rut. I go through the motions but I don't always have the desire and will to be there. Last week, I was complaining through a certain - rather painful - set of ab exercises. A just laughed - as he loves to torture me - and told me that with my willpower, I can get through it. That has been the case all along. That was the case the first time I got on a spin bike - with the plan to make it through 30 minutes of class and then crawl away to lick my wounds (or ice my sore regions) - and made it through the hour. But somehow - somewhere - in the midst of the end of the school year, the stress with the uncertainty of where I will call my school home next year and everything else, I seem to have misplaced that willpower.

And probably even more damaging that my lack of zest at the gym has been my eating. Again, I haven't gone crazy. I haven't picked back up my habit of buying a family size bag of Reece's peanut butter cups and eating the whole bag - in one evening. I haven't had any ice cream (my nemesis). But I have been having that extra handful of Goldfish. Or maybe that second serving of dinner with I didn't need it. I let those bad habits of stress eating creep back in. It's not a good thing. It's not something I wanted to ever see happen. But it did so I have to learn from it and keep moving along.

But maybe its a good life lesson. Life is going to happen always. I am always going to reach stressful points in my life. I am going to hit highs and lows. All of that is normal. What has to become my new normal is how I deal with it. I have to find that way to deal with it and not let it ruin my success or knock me off track. This journey I am on isn't a quick trip. I'm not going to reach these goals overnight. So in the meantime, I have to continue to work on me. I have to continue to tweak this new normal. There is no one or no situation that I can blame for getting off track. This is me - and only me. And me- and only me - can get myself back on track.

So tomorrow when I get back on the scale with A, I will hold my breathe and hope for the best. I will hope the inches show some success where maybe the scale fails me. But more important than what the data is going to show me tomorrow is that it will be a fresh start. I will walk out of the gym tomorrow morning with a new resolve to get back on track.

I will take that resolve on my week trip around the state. I went through tonight and made a plan of workouts around the state for this quick road trip. I am going to workout with former students in Waco and no doubt I'll workout with one of my biggest supporters who I am visiting in West Texas. I am going to make this work.

This is my new normal. The quicker I accept it, the happier I am going to be.