Transformation Tuesday Thoughts - The Summer Slide
Here’s a type of transformation that I usually don’t like to share, but I decided that I’m probably not the only one going through it. In fact, I know I’m not because I hear my friends saying similar things.
So I’ll just get this off my chest. I am in the thick of a hard-core “summer slide”. I was super-focused on my fitness, workouts, nutrition, and self-care for a good year, and I experienced some great results. I felt stronger, more energized, happier, and yep, I lost some body fat and gained some lean mass. I was looking the leanest that I have in a long time. I got all of my “skinny clothes” out of the storage bins and guess what? They fit! I knew that I would never go back to my old habits…
But that was three months ago. And now those clothes are too tight and I had to pull out a bigger shirt yesterday. I’m feeling thick and weighed down. My blood sugars have been running higher. It’s way harder to motivate myself and my mood is worse.
So what, exactly, happened?
First, I want to say that I’ve got the amazing knowledge and encouragement of the Fuse Trainers and our #fusefam at my disposal. But...I met my body composition goal and the Hustle for the Muscle team challenge ended. I kind of thought I could take it a little easy for the summer. And then a couple parts of my life felt extra stressful. Nothing that won’t be fine in the long-run, but I started binge-eating again to “deal” with it. There were more laid-back summer get-togethers, and the cocktails just taste so good when it’s warm out! Sitting out at kids’ baseball games until late made it extra hard to get up and work out at 5 am.
But here’s the thing. I’ve been here before. But never have I felt pretty ok with it. I mean, I want to get back on track, but I don’t feel bad about the slide. It’s a part of life, and it’s really hard to maintain the fitness level I want at *cough* 40 years old. Me being a little heavier doesn’t change the person I am. It doesn’t make my friends like me less. It doesn’t make me less successful at work. But I’m just feeling a little blah.
Now that I’m getting in the back-to-school mindset, I’m ready to get myself back on track, too. I’m going to commit right here to a couple little things that I can do to take care of myself. Not to lose weight, but to make sure I’m doing what I can to handle stress in a better way. First (and this is a big one), I’m starting therapy next week to work through a couple of those stressful things I mentioned! I’m super excited to get some tools and tips from a pro. I’m also going to be consistent with my 4-day a week workouts, and I’m going to go to bed by 9:00 pm. If I can do just those couple things, I know that I won’t binge-eat (because it always happens after 9:00 pm). Once I am consistent with those, I’ll set another one or two small goals.
Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash
Who wants to join me? If you’re a regular Fuse member, schedule those workouts ahead and let’s get back in the groove. If you’ve never tried it before, come in for a free trial week and you can be my partner!
