kabby.net blog

Finding Strength When You’re Discouraged

No one is strong 100% of the time.  As it says in the Sarah McLachlan song, “We all falter, but does it matter?”  It matters only if we make it matter.

Lifehacker recently exposed me to a quote from a famous basketball player & coach, John Wooden (not to be confused with the fellow I knew from high school of the same name):

In the weight loss and weight maintenance journey, we are all going to make mistakes.  The difference between those who succeed and those who fail is primarily found in how they respond to those mistakes.

This past Monday, I had a falter day.  I was exhausted from a long bike ride on Sunday, and I had recognized that it was likely for me to go over my calorie goal due to the amount I had eaten that day.  I kept positive, ate my dinner normally, and planned a medium length bike ride to burn off the calories I had just eaten over my goal.  In the process, of course, I became even more exhausted, but I pushed myself pretty hard to accomplish the goal I had set for myself.  I ended up burning more calories than I needed by (what I had thought was) about 150.

That night, my BFF came over to my house so we could watch her friend on TV as planned.  What I hadn’t planned for was the cheesecake she brought.  It was a friendly gesture, of course, and one I would be rude to refuse.  That small cheesecake slice wound up being 380 calories.

After she left, I was completely distraught.  I was pushing myself so hard and yet I was still going over on my calorie goals.  First, I decided not to blame my friend; she would still care about me if I’d have refused the cheesecake or only eaten a small part of it.  Second, I had to try to not blame myself.  I should have spoken up for myself, yes, but I instead blamed my “social identity,” that is, the voice inside that tells me it’s wrong to refuse this offer from a friend.  It still hurt.  I wrote a blog post about it that I never published.  I still needed encouragement.

So, I did the one thing that worked: I talked to another friend.  He reassured me that the ordeal wasn’t the end of the world, and that I had the willpower and motivation to keep going even if I hit set backs.  He reminded me of what I’d accomplished in the past.  It wasn’t until we were done talking that I felt somewhat better and was able to get to sleep.

Two days later, I finally had the nerve to return to Monday’s Daily Plate tracking.  I had tracked Tuesday, but I hadn’t had a final look at Monday to make sure I’d tracked everything.  As it turns out, instead of being 230 calories over, I was only 57 calories over – close enough to my target to call the day “on track.”  I was in complete disbelief.  A combination of their poor iPhone/iPad apps and perhaps some poor math on my part were the culprits for my thoughts that I was over my goal.

The moral of this story is simple.  When things are bad, they’re rarely, if ever, as bad as you think they are.  It’s your reaction to adversity that determines your future success.  If you are looking out into your calorie-counting future and all you see is despair, reach out to someone.  They will help you step back from the situation and get some more perspective.  Reassure yourself that you are not going to feel this bad every day.  Pushing through the problems and emerging safely on the other side will give you even more reasons to be proud of yourself.

August 4, 2011