When it feels like you’re always starting over

Do you ever get the feeling that every week, every month or even every few days you reach a point in your fitness journey where you know you’ve gone off track and have to start over?

I do.

Today is one of those days. I indulged quite a bit over the weekend (especially yesterday with chips and guacamole in the afternoon and pizza for dinner) and worked out pretty sparsely during the week, so today I’m once again trying to turn over a new leaf.

I blogged the other day about losing motivation and these two things are certainly connected. With low motivation comes bad decisions which then leads to feeling even less motivated, and on and on you go in a vicious circle.

It is now the beginning of a new week, a new month and a new season that should be arriving any day now (for real this time), so in a way it’s the perfect moment for me to be having this crisis of confidence. There’s so much newness and change that it’s hard to stay mired in the rut I’ve formed in my eating and exercising plan.

Also helping me get back into the right mindset: today I found an old picture of myself from probably a year and a half ago, when I was at the weight I’m trying to get back to now. I couldn’t believe how different I looked – and how much better! I want very badly to get back to that point and to feel that fit again. It’s really amazing what 10-15 pounds can do.

So, it’s back on, full force!

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Speed bumps to motivation

In the past week or so, I’ve had trouble getting myself motivated. After doing great and being consistent with the 100 pushup challenge for 3 weeks in a row, my left shoulder started hurting. It was bad enough that I decided to put the pushups on hold to make sure I didn’t hurt myself further. Even doing my zumba on Tuesday, some of the arm movements didn’t feel great.

It’s tough when you have a setback that forces you to put something you’ve been making progress with on hold. I was really enjoying seeing some arm muscles on myself and I wanted to keep improving, so I was tempted to keep working on my pushups anyway. But then I realized I would be doing more harm than good.

I took the week off from pushups, and when I resume on Monday, I’ll redo week 3 to get myself back up to speed.

On top of that, this week has been a tough one, kicking off with a dentist appointment (which I always dread, even though it was just a cleaning), and jam packed with work related stress. All of this combined has lead to a problem getting myself motivated to do much of anything productive yesterday and today. I felt like I should go to the gym today, but the thought of it just wasn’t very appealing.

Every now and then, motivation can be really tough to find. When I face these situations, I tell myself that it’s okay to take a few days to be lazy and do some relaxing things. Usually once a few days go by where I don’t put that extra pressure on myself, I come back refreshed and ready to jump back in with both feet. I’m hopeful that by Monday, I’ll be ready to get moving again. D has already said that he wants us both to go to the gym tomorrow, so I will be doing that as well.

How do you bounce back when motivation and energy are scarce?