Is better ever really good enough?
I feel better.
I get up in the morning, even if I am terribly sore and don’t want to, and I feel better than I have in a very long time. My clothes are either just coming out of storage and fit me, or they are too big. I feel a sense of control over my eating habits that I also haven’t in a very long time. I can do more in one day than I used to be able to and am still full of energy because of the combination of the way I have changed from the inside with my eating habits, and the way my body is toning and strengthening from the cardio and RX. I have a wonderful time working out, I am completely addicted to RX and don’t ever want to quit it. I am bound and determined to actually touch the ceiling climbing the rope, whether it’s at the beginning or the end of class. Side note, I got about 2/3 of the way up the rope this last week, twice! What an exhilarating feeling to be able to do something that was not an option before!
Funny thing is, I still want to look even better! I still look in the mirror and see that extra weight around my belly that I’m not sure ever goes away after 3 children and not taking care of myself for too long, and think, why doesn’t that go away? I feel like I’m working so hard and it should just be melting off, right? I walk by those itty bitty teeny-weeny polka dot bikinis at Target and still know there is no way anyone sees me in something like that yet! Does that make me, I don’t know, vain? When is better good enough? Is it ever? I hope that I have the answer to that question.
I think that I am still too far from my end goal, no matter how far I have already come, to feel that I am at a “good enough” place. I am stronger and have more endurance, and have lost a chunk of weight (pun totally intended). But I have not made it to my end goal. I need to be keeping sight of the fact that I am simply not there yet, and really shouldn’t be happy with what I have yet! If I was happy with what I had done so far, I would just be a little better for the rest of my life, but still not quite good enough. For once in my life, being unhappy with where I am is a very healthy thing to be feeling.
This is where I need to emphasize the importance of having smaller goals to meet in the longer process of achieving your end goal, which is something I’ve always technically known, but never consciously put into practice in a thing like I’m doing now. Maybe that’s because this has really turned into one of the most difficult journeys I have ever taken. It always seemed so daunting and unfeasible before, and now it almost seems easy. Until I go to what Heather calls “the next level of RX.” Then I remember it is so not easy! It is clear, obvious, not by any means easy. There is a lot of hard work involved, a lot of changing details involved, and that is what is so hard. Something my parents always said to me was that it takes 21 straight days of doing something different to turn it into a habit. Habits are a lot easier to keep up with than new things! So, having that initial 21 days of turning the new things into a habit is a really great first goal.
You know what else is a really great halfway goal? A wedding. I am in my final week before my sister in law’s wedding wearing that newly altered (hah!) dress that is actually too big still (hah again!). I am kinda hoping to get maybe a few more pounds gone before that, to reach my goal I set at the beginning for the actual wedding. But even if I don’t quite get those taken care of this week, I still am quite happy to have come this far into the program and into my total weight lost goal, and all that does is motivate me to see this through to the absolute end goal.
So here it is, the end stretch of my halfway goal, and I feel like I can do it because, after all, I do feel better.
