As a teacher and a semi-professional photographer, I know that the way we say things and the way we see things are interpreted differently depending on the audience. Some classes I can speak to one way and some I cannot. Some clients like a Rembrandt look on the portrait photographs some don't. Taste and understanding are vitally important in both my careers and knowing how to make a class or a client relax is a great asset. So working with myself to become relaxed and happy with the routine I have set myself is also vitally important to me in terms of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Too much of one thing or too little of another can stop motivation or make me too tired or too bored to want to continue.
Each time I go through the day I look at what I have done and talk myself through it or, if I don't or can't eat something because I have already eaten too much, I have to be relaxed and happy with the choice that I make not to eat it. The habits and daily goals I set myself have all helped me to continue on the path I have wanted to go on and to keep going on. Sometimes it has been hard and I have failed...a lot. Sometimes it is easy and I lull myself into a false sense of security and before long...I have failed again. Getting myself into a relaxed mindset, happy with the choices I am making day to day and knowing that they are becoming the healthy habits is the reason I am still here. Still fighting.
So over the past few days I have really been on a knife edge and teetered on the point of giving in because, I am presuming I wasn't eating enough, I was finding myself exhausted every day and my legs wanting to slip from under me. It's been the hardest part of these last few weeks. But because I am now quite relaxed in the healthy lifestyle I am leading and am really starting to notice the weight coming off, I was always (now I look back at it) going to pull through and not fail. Failure is no longer an option.
I can see why people fail when they start their journey, often they see it as being easy and, in their mind, the weight will fall off after a few weeks. Then, when hunger starts, or exhaustion creeps in, or the weight doesn't 'look' like it's coming off, our motivation wains and we see the goody cupboard, with all the things you love to eat, staring at you and you go back to what was nice, what was comfortable.
At the moment I am really starting to practice my strobe lighting so that I can do more studio portraits and, thankfully, I have a willing volunteer in my wife. Without the perseverance and the hard work and the dedication of the reading and the watching others and the taking photos and the editing and the etc etc, I would and will fail and will give up and go back to what I know I can do...natural light portraits. But I want to grow and do more. I want to be better and not fail or give up...and that is the same with a journey to a healthier lifestyle.
Yes it's hard at the beginning, God knows how many times I have started this journey and left the motorway a few miles in. But now I know that, once you have gone a few miles, once the miles click away and you get past that initial hardness, that initial shock and get in to a routine and begin to enjoy the process, it's then that you really start to see the benefits of what you are doing. I feel more energised, my clothes (especially my tops) are beginning to fit again. My moobs are slowly going and I can feel my energy and fitness increasing all the time.
I am, most often in things like this, my own worst enemy. I convince myself that I will do it and then struggle and tell myself that it is fate that I failed. Now that I am on day 155, I can see that that was absolutely not the case. The problem was always getting to that point where it was no longer a chore but, instead, it was a routine and a routine that was working and I was enjoying. I always wondered what people were thinking when they said that they were enjoying the diet or the fitness or the calorie control...now I get it. Once it becomes normal, something you simply do, then you can sit back and be you.
Where I am at the moment is great. I have made so many friends on www.Healthunlocked.com who talk to me and encourage me and are always willing to lend a hand if I need it, and this has also got me through to the point I am at right now. I have people who follow this blog, to which I am eternally grateful, knowing that even a few people are interested in my journey and the hope that it is helping them, makes me continue and makes me keep going. There are so many things that could keep you going, keep you losing the weight, getting fitter and leading a healthier lifestyle and it just takes a little perseverance and effort and, once those routines are in place, it becomes a walk in the park...or the countryside, which is where I walked to day. It was a lovely walk and I clocked up 22,314 steps, not bad for a day where I am still recovering from my earlier stupidity.
So my journey is going amazingly well. We have some new scales so, when I weigh myself tomorrow, I am hoping that the other scales were accurate (which I don't think they were but I am going to weigh myself on those too to see if I have still lost no matter what the other ones say). I have two days off morning exercises to help my muscles rest and recover and then I will be back on it again Monday...this time with a different routine. Always pays to diversify.
So until tomorrow, stay strong and stay safe and stay on it!
Thanks for reading.
Sean.
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