If you were hoping to find a dramatic weight loss story, or how I went from the couch to running marathons, this is not it. Maybe those kind of awe inspiring transformations happen to some people, but more often I find those stories tend to discourage me rather than motivate me, because my own life never seems to have that exponential improvement factor to it.
Rather, I want to share some of the slow, back and forth but gradually increasing journey of health and fitness that I've both fought for and been given over these past couple of years, as well as some of the things that have made all the difference along the way. My hope is that you will be encouraged and perhaps even better equipped along your own journey.
As a kid, I was active all the time, ate mostly healthy food and had no problems with any of it... By the end of high school, although I didn't appear unfit or overweight, I struggled to run a ten minute loop around my neighborhood, I couldn't tell you what the inside of a gym looked like and I considered a deep fried jam donut a sufficient meal.
I am somewhat of an idealist bordering on perfectionist sometimes, so I really struggled to see health as a lifewide concept whose future depended on today's choices. So I would go for a run for 15 mins and feel like I had conquered the world but be confused as to why I didn't have a 6 pack by morning and be able to run 10 km the next day. Or I would start the day well then eat cookies for lunch and throw away the whole next week because who can rescue the week after that?
Fast forward nearly 7 years, now I am confident to walk into a gym and carry out the workout I designed myself, even though I'm usually the only woman there. I am currently training for a 10 km trail race next month and consistently am able to choose foods that fuel my body, as well as having the freedom to eat treat foods and enjoy them. I am a healthy weight, I am confident, strong and aware of how what I do and eat affects all aspects of my life. But honestly most of this change has happened in the past year, with the other 6 years being a series of rules, restarts, frustrations and lack of knowledge about how to care properly for myself.
I want to share some of the things that helped and hindered my health journey, but I want to make a disclaimer also that everyone's journey looks different. So if there are things that didn't help me, it doesn't make them a useless or bad thing at all, it may be something that is incredibly helpful for you, in the same way that those things which encouraged me along my journey might not do the same for someone else. So this is not a prescription.
What didn't work for me...
Making rules for myself about what I can and cannot eat.
I seriously tried this one for close to ten years before finally accepting that it doesn't work. As soon as I remove freedom from the equation, I leave myself in a position of succeeding or failing. And failing seems to take up ten times as much memory space than succeeding. Food cannot be labelled as "good" or "bad", it just is. It's like a table, like a leaf, like a truck... it doesn't contain either inherently good or evil properties. It does however have different effects on my body, and when I stopped making rules about what can and can't be eaten, I was able to see with more clarity what effect a food would have on me and choose based on that.
Having treat days.
I realise this is a tricky one, and actually may work really well for some people. For me, this looked like "binge Friday", a day where I would set aside all guilt about what I was eating and whatever looked good would go in my mouth. This is kind of embarrassing to write about now because of how terrible that logic was, but nevertheless, it happened for several years. The problem with this is that I would have these great intentions about Saturday morning being a new healthy start to the next week... but because of my poor food choices the night before, I would feel grumpy, low on energy, hungry and had usually the same cravings again for sugar and fatty foods. It's like an addictive food hangover that makes a good start the next morning nearly impossible. This mindset also removes all responsibility for one day and places a greater expectation for it on other days, also something that I couldn't live up to.
Starting Fresh.
I'll be honest, this is still a mindset I have to confront regularly and still struggle with... but I'll write about it anyway. A new week, a new month, new years, birthdays, graduation, new job.... All these significant or not so significant milestones that in my mind seemed to mark a point that I could pick out and say "from that day onward I will be healthy". Again, embarrassingly terrible logic... As if all the habits, miseducation, cravings and lack of will would be wiped away overnight as the end of December became the start of January. The thing is, these starting fresh dates actually do work... for maybe 3 days or so depending on how determined I was at the time... but it would be ruined because of my all or nothing attitude, so as soon as I made a poor decision, was lazy or simply did something I've done for years and the calendar date couldn't change it, I would spiral down into failure and almost subconsciously be looking to what the next significant date or milestone could be.
Having level 10 goals when I'm still on level 2.
In my first year of university I signed up for a marathon. Had I run more than 2 km all year....? Hm, nope. Did I actually really want to do a marathon? Nope. But I signed up because of a mix of wanting to please the person who asked me if I wanted to and because I thought maybe it would be my fitness salvation. And I gave it a decent go... for maybe a month when I trained too hard too fast and caused a relapse of my shin splints from a few years back. Again I was icing my legs, hobbling around and feeling like a failure. I believe in the power of goals 100%, I think they are important in any kind of personal growth. But they need to be realistic goals for where you're at right now. For someone who rarely exercises, going for a walk 4 times a week is a perfectly worthy goal. But for someone else, training for a marathon might be the drive they need to push through to their next level.
What did work for me
Allowing other people to be a part of the journey.
For a long time I was scared to tell people what I was aiming for, what I was hoping to be able to achieve... Because if I failed (which I inevitably thought I would), it would be less exposing if I could quietly release my goal out the back door and not have to admit I couldn't do it. But as I've learned to trust people and share with them my goals and struggles, I've found that friends are a surprising source of strength, motivation and accountability. So if you're reading this... Asia, thank you for basically reteaching me everything and changing my life. Amber thank you for running with me, Tegan thank you for organising hiking trips, Sarah thank you for sharing your own journey with me. Raisa thank you for being a strong outdoors champion who I am secretly way more inspired by than you know, Lauren thank you for late night gym trips at uni and frosty morning runs. Jacqueline thank you for biking at 6 30 in the morning consistently with me, dad thank you for being someone who doesn't let age or winter stop you from having big goals and actually doing them... And many many other people who have allowed me to lean on them to get stronger.
Revamping my Facebook Newsfeed.
This sounds like a small thing, but actually makes a big difference. I used to have all sorts of food pages, movie suggestions, dumb pointless ads and people whose lifestyles I wasn't aiming to follow but would post regularly about what they were doing. Over a period of a few months I slowly unfollowed people whose posts didn't help me and began liking pages such as Outdoor Womens Alliance, Canadian Running Magazine, Vegan Community and other such topics. This means that when I scroll through Facebook I am bombarded with messages of motivation, health and the stories of other people who inspire me to be more active, healthy and intentional.
I stopped assuming exercise and good nutrition would just happen.
Prior to the last year, I never considered exercise or food to be something I had to plan. It would somehow naturally happen in all that spare time I didn't have with all of the extra motivation and energy I also didn't have.... right? No. If I don't plan and prioritize being active, there is no way it will happen. So now every Friday I go through my next weeks calendar and schedule in runs, gym times, swimming, biking with a friend... I sit down and design gym workouts that will target different muscle groups and make the most of the time I have there. I also find healthy recipes and schedule time each week to cook some big meals to freeze in portion sizes, because I no longer consider toast a decent lunch, even if I don't have much time.
I started pursuing consistency over perfection
Yes there are days where I stay home and watch a movie with my friends rather than go on the 5km run I planned for the evening. And yes there are days when I eat cheese and choose fries over salad. But I no longer consider those things to be a failure, and therefore I no longer feel like my whole week has gone to waste. Now rather than looking at one meal or one day as a marker for success or failure, I try to look at the whole week or month and see the themes and patterns that are happening... As long as I am still moving in the right direction overall, then the little things can be embraced as part of the whole journey of becoming a person who is more gracious, accepting, happy and whole.
There is so so much more I could write on this topic, but if you read this and are also struggling to make progress in your health journey I would love to talk with you about it, because going it alone is definitely the hardest route there is!
There is a long way that I have come, but I still consider myself hiking through the foothills of this mountain I'm planning on climbing... I have lots more goals, different sports I want to try, people I want to learn from and areas that my confidence still has lots of room to grow in. But I'm also content, who I am and where I am right now with health and fitness is a win, I'm thankful to God and to my people for doing this with me!
