Rumspringa...My Tracy Anderson Transformation: Day 37: It's All Mental

Friday, October 14, 2011

Day 37: It's All Mental

Golly, between that time of the month, getting over my cold, fighting depressive thoughts, and LIFE, I felt like I was mentally bouncing around and swirling trying to regain my equilibrium. By the end of this week (Saturday) I will have done 3 workouts instead of the 5 I've been doing the past 7 weeks. I'll be honest, I was nervous. I didn't know for sure that I'd be able to get back into my good habits. After all, I've been a non-consistent exerciser for my whole life, so it would seem that 7 weeks may not be enough time to confidently overcome a lifetime of an engrained habit (not working out regularly). Thankfully, after today's workout, day 37, I feel back on track mentally which is what I've come to realize is the biggest challenge of metamorphosis and probably most other goals for that matter. The physical part is easy peasy compared to the mental (don't get me wrong, Tracy's workout is the most challenging I've ever done).

I had forgotten how good it feels to get all the way through an hour long workout, and what a sense of accomplishments that I feel ever day, every week, and every level I get through. I'd forgotten how good it feels to move my body and how good it feels to have muscles activating in place of my body I've never even felt muscles being used before. I had quickly forgotten these things, and instead was focusing on...hmm...what was I focusing on that made it hard to get back on track? I guess I was just focusing on not wanting to do anything at all which to me sounds like depsression. I think I was also discouraged at how much less intensity I can do my cardio with due to shin splints and knee pain. It felt like I had taken a step backwards, and it felt like maybe I wasn't gonna make it to the end with good results. I think again diet through me off too. I had forgotten my goal, my main goal was to get all the way through the program and that's it. There really is something to being able to let go of what I want my results to be (in terms of weight loss). When I'm focused on losing weight, I get worried and stressed because I don't know when weight loss will happen. I really divert so much energy (and worry and stress) into the outcome, and the truth is that takes away the energy and focus from working out. Which of course if I'm not working out I will naturally have more weight on me. Vicious cycles are crazy things because you're spinning so fast and get so caught up in them that it feels like being in a cycle is normal. It takes a lot of effort to realize you do have the power to break the cycle and take a different path.

So, what helped me break the cycle of working out for a bit, taking a few days off, throwing in the towel for a while, starting over, repeat over and over again for many years? Several thoughts came to me in a conversation I had with myself today. I think the first thing I felt was fear/fatigue/anxiety all in one. I was afraid that all my hard work would have been for nothing because in the end I thought maybe I was about to break my good habit and be sucked back into the vicious cycle. I didn't feel like exercising, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to convince myself to do it. I was anxious for the day ahead and just wanted to drown out those thoughts with food and television. I felt tired because my food choices really affect my body, and food is something I'm still working on, and until I can eat healthier I have to accept that my energy levels only have a certain capacity at this time. That's how I started my day.

Then I thought to myself, well let me just put on my workout clothes and that will help get me into my exercising mindset. That helped because apparently habits don't have to work against you, they can work in your favor as well. It got me enough in the mindset that I was able to start my workout. Then as I was doing my workout, I once again reminded myself that 1hour a day is nothing (especially when thinking about it in terms of how fast an hour of tv goes by, or how short an hour of work or school is). If I was feeling stress or depression or that I wasn't in shape enough to do the workout, I reminded myself that exercise helps with depression and it is a fact that if I continue on I will get into better shape, and that I only have to do my best and nothing more. I reminded myself that exercise could only serve to positively impact every other area of my life that I struggle with. It has no downside, and in an hour it'll be over.

In the end I got through it. It's so weird to me because if I have 10 or 5 or 30 minutes left of a workout, it feels the same. But the minute it's over I can't believe it's already finished, and I can't believe I made it through the challenges that day. Even 37 days later, my mind doesn't know how strong I am or what I'm capable of. But, I believe in time it will. I continue to be amazed with how many life lessons I'm gaining fromt this program that are not even related to getting in shape physically, but are instead about getting in shape mentally. Whew, it feels so good to be back.

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What has Made This Time Different?

I have attempted to try to stick to an exercise routine so many times in my life, and yet I've rarely made it past a week or two at the most. This time has been a whole new experience, and this is a list of the reasons why (subject to change). Perhaps one or all of these will resonate with you too:

1) I have a simple, mental, visual analogy to help me focus on the bigger picture: In the past I've dieted and exercised and wondered why am I not losing weight? The key was that I wasn't consistent. The truth was that my efforts were sporadic rather than stacking one on top of the other. So it felt like I had exerted so much energy (which I had), but because it was not one foot in front of the other, my efforts did not stack up to any actual results. This made the most sense to me once I understood the the visual analogy of climbing a wall. My goal (lose weight/get fit) was to get over this wall. My attempts to get over the wall included climbing up (working out, dieting). However, I was constantly climbing back down the wall without realizing it (getting off the dieting, not exercising). Over time, I was exhausted from climbing up and didn't understand why I had not yet made it over, after all I had put in a lot of effort. It was then that I realized that every time I stop exercising, I am not picking up from where I left off the next time I start up again. Instead, I have to start from the very bottom of the wall. The steps up the wall do not help you climb over unless the are consistenly moving in a forward direction upward. While this may seem simple, and easy to understand intellectually, it was something I had to understand in the form of an epiphany. It was the first step to me being able to be consistent with my Tracy Anderson Method.

2) Make the goal about following through with the actions, rather than just focusing on the end results: Now that I understood that consistency was such an important factor in being successful with my goal, I had to figure out how to actually be consistent when I had never before been able to. It was so hard for me to imagine getting past level 1, because in my previous attempts I had learned how to do a few days of level 1, feel defeated, take a break, and then start over on level 1 again once I felt like I just couldn't take being overweight any more. My brain only understood how to stop and start over, so it just couldn't imagine what it felt like to move forward to L2-L9 and beyond. So, I made a commitment to myself that I did not even have to do the levels if I did not want to, but that I would play the videos every day as though I were doing them, just for the sake of my brain understanding what that would feel like. Amazingly enough, this triggered something in my brain so that it could at least entertain the possibility of experiencing the program beyond level 1.

3) Don't tell anyone I am learning to establish an exercise routine, until I'm on a roll. I understand using someone as an accountability buddy, and I do think that is helpful. But for me, I found that when I told people I was starting to exercise I diverted energy away from my goal (establish a regular exercise routine). So when I used to tell people, "oh I'm starting something new" people kindly wanted to know how it's going, how much I've lost, all these reasonable questions. For me, that added an extra pressure that I just didn't need. I didn't want to be accountable to anyone but myself, and I because I am someone who worries too much about what other people think, it just served me better to start the journey on my own and learn from my own experiences, learn to trust myself and my own instinct, and feel free to experiment without fearing judgements from others.

4) Don't make any changes to diet initially, but instead first focus on making exercise a regular part of my routine. Learning to exercise regularly and consistently & eating nutritiously are both lofty goals in and of themselves. To do both simultaneously has never ever worked for me. For my brain, my emotions, my inability to adapt to change, it was far too large an undertaking to attempt diet exercise simultaneously. For me, exercise is the easier place to start because it feels more in my control. There are only two choices (to exercise or not), and it is completely up to me, and not influenced by much else. On the other hand, food requires more preparation what with shopping, and storing and cooking, and taking food with me places. Exercise is just once a day whereas eating is something to work on multiple times throughout the day. Another thing is that if I attempted exercise and diet at the same time, if I did poorly in one area that day, it wiped out any good work I did in the other area (in my mind), and made me want to give up on BOTH. Exercise is the place to start for me.

5) Accept that my objectives are long-term and therefore no matter how hard I work, I will not be skinny in a month or two. But a year from now and for the rest of my life I will be.

6) Keep a blog or journal. For me, blogging has enabled me to see that some days are challenging, but there are also other days are easier. It is easy to forget the good days when I'm just focusing on the negative one at hand. Blogging allows me to go back and remember the positive things I've gained and learned along my journey.

7) Exercise with a buddy in the beginning to help make exercise a daily habit. While I didn't tell anyone about working out until about 2 weeks after I'd started, after that when I told my friend she was excited and wanted to try it out too. We exercised together for about two weeks, and that helped me establish a routine of exercising first thing in the morning consistenly.

8) Immerse myself in the success of others. I read others' blogs and success stories and facebook and the TA forum. www.masteringthemethod.com was such a great tool because it was the first visual I had to understand that this was going to be a journey and a process. It is so easy to see the "before" and "afters" and think that 1 week or a month of commiting will take me from before to after. Being able to see the "during" as well made such a difference to my brain because it was like the missing piece of the puzzle to understand this is not in any shape or form an overnight, overweek, or overmonth process. It showed me the bridge from "before" through "during" to "after".

9) Watch and re-watch and watch again Tracy's informercial and multiple visits to QVC. Especially the first month I watched them almost every day. Seeing the informercial is the pique of excitement in the beginning of a new exercise routine. Watching the infomercials help me remember the feelings I had in the beginnning and reminds me why I began this journey in the first place.

10) Trust Tracy, yourself, and those who have come before you, and have faith that while you can't imagine it today, each step you take will lead you to your after as it has for so many others.

11) Let go of being a perfectionist. Being a perfectionist prevented me from succeeding 100% of the other times I've attempted to exercise. It was vital to learn to only do whatever my personal abilites are and nothing more. Understanding and believing that I would build from wherever I was starting, as there is no need to exhaust myself physically and mentally by exercising beyond my capabilites was again instrumental. The very first time I tried metamorphosis, I was beyond defeated and in tears as there was no way I was gonna be able to do 40 reps of all the leg exercises as she did. I initially would pause the TV after every exercise attempting to complete 40 reps like Tracy was going. Helllllloooo, Tracy is in shape and she invented the method for goodness sake. I never exercised and was carrying around at least 50 pounds that didn't need to be there. Because I couldn't be "perfect" I thought I couldn't do the method. This was completely false. Finally, I figured out that I just had to do whatever reps I was able to do while she was doing the same exercise. Then when she moved on, I moved on to the next move. Suddenly my abilites were increasing, just by doing my personal best. It was the same thing with the cardio. It was important to me to play the whole tape, but that didn't mean I had to be jumping the whole time. Instead, I would step touch or march in place, drink some water. The point is that I got to experience what 30 minutes of cardio would feel like, and eventually be able to build up to it. I can now do an hour of cardio :)

...to be continued

Rumspringa...My Tracy Anderson Transformation

90 Day Metamorphosis with Tracy Anderson

Friday, October 14, 2011

Day 37: It's All Mental

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