It has been a month since I started training for a competition. I never thought I would do something like this. In fact, had anyone told me last year that a year later I would be training in a fitness competition, I would have probably laughed. The truth is that we never think about what we may be capable of and we can never, ever read the future, regardless of what we think we are capable of.
So here I am, 11 months after starting my fitness journey with P90X, literally training my butt off for this thing called competition. I have to say that the level of commitment and time is a lot more intense but the truth is that I enjoy training hard, I always have. I enjoyed training for the marathon years ago. I guess I have always enjoyed pushing my physical capabilities to the limit just to see how far I could get. I have always enjoyed a good challenge and the benefit of having a beautiful sculpted body really entices me, I won’t lie about that.
Since my commitment to being truthful of where I am in regards to my fitness is important to me because I know it will make a difference for someone out there who is reading this, I must also be truthful of where I am in regards to my motivation and this is what this post is about. So here it goes…
A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a blog from a girl who is about to enter a competition after a great loss. Her husband worries about her because she is moody all the time and told her that if she were to consider doing this again, it would be the end of their marriage. She posted an angry blog stating that she was planning on competing for the rest of her life. I had already noticed how many angry blog posts she had written and I have to say it saddened me. One thing for sure is that I will never, ever put a competition or my fitness before my family so my priorities are extremely different. Joseph has been completely supportive and wonderful in this whole process, encouraging me, cheering for me and giving me pep talks when I feel discouraged.
Yesterday was one of those days. One of the things I am required to do is to take pictures and measurements once a week. It helps to a degree, except when the problem areas don’t seem to shift and in my case, my waist seems to not have changed much for the last couple of weeks, in fact, it seems to have somehow increased a bit which really doesn’t make sense. Yes, I know it’s the last thing to go and the area that we all struggle with the most and if you are doing P90X, you’ll notice that this is the area that we focus on the most, in the sense that we do it every time we do resistance training (weights). I have to consider that it may be possible that I just have not been taking the measurements correctly or that the measuring tape may not be in the same place every week, because my favorite jeans that did not fit a month ago, the ones that I have had hanging on my closet door as my goal now fit PERFECTLY not only that, this week they fit better than last and I have no “muffin top.” And for some reason, I seem to have forgotten that my arms are looking pretty shapely and for the first time in my life, I can say I have entered the category of “moms with guns.” No, I’m not talking about the NRA types of weapons, my arms are really looking pretty hot and I am excited about that 🙂
As I wrote in my group “girls, I am discouraged about the stats” one of the wonderful girls wrote “Veronica, remember that your jeans fit?” So this morning I looked for the jeans and put them on, sure enough, they fit even better than last week. When I came downstairs with this huge smile on my face, Joseph told me that the problem with me is that I don’t listen (to him) when he’s telling me that my tummy has shrunk. But as you know, it’s hard to listen when the numbers tell a different story because I always think, well “numbers don’t lie” (by the way, neither does he). Since I know myself well enough to know that I’m going to not listen to him again, I have to find something that is going to work to help me snap out of it. For me, it’s the jeans and I know it is. The jeans somehow remind me to stay grounded and not get discouraged so easily. I guess instead of thinking that “numbers don’t lie” I am training my mind to think, “the jeans don’t lie.” I made an agreement with Joseph that next time, he is not to give me the usual “pep-talk,” instead, he just needs to say “put the jeans on.”
When someone is on our side, cheering for us, it’s so easy to dump on that person when we think that we are not getting the results we want. I am guilty of that. But that’s when we need to find something that will work. Put something on that didn’t fit a few months ago and that fits now or find something that will work for you. We really don’t want to discourage our cheerleaders when we feel discouraged. We will need all the cheering possible and all the “you can do this” words of encouragement at times when we don’t feel like we can. What I realized this morning is that not only do I need to exercise my body and follow the nutrition plan to a “T”, I also need to start exercising my ability to listen to my biggest cheerleader and finding something that works for me in the process is as important as following the nutrition and exercise plan.