Never feel defeated

Now that's a title! I went back and forth, back and forth, trying to decide if I should share some of my experiences this week. With Carrie's last post I decided it's time to come clean. First I want to mention that I love Carrie's post and it is so true. When you make those little decisions to push a little harder, or go a little further, give your 100% then you will see your life start to change for the positive. I have seen this in the last 3 weeks of doing Body For Life. I've started to really push myself on my runs. I, like everyone else, get tired when I run, especially uphill. So I like to take breaks and walk. But I decided to push through my first initial desire to walk and keep running. It takes practice and a lot of positive self-talk. Now I push through the first 2 times I want to walk. When I get to the 3rd I finally walk but it feels great to look back and realize that I pushed through those first 2. I always give myself a landmark to run to whether it's a parked car, a light post, a large boulder, a street sign. So when I look back to see how far I pushed myself it's very obvious how far I was able to go. Sometimes it's just  a few feet and sometimes it's a few yards and sometimes it's all the way up that darn hill.
But now on to the part I feel ashamed about. Last week and this week (yes two weeks in a row) I took 2 cheat days in a row. Yes 2 cheat days in a row. You read it right. I'm sitting here thinking, "Carrie would never do that! She is going to be so upset and disappointed in me. She is going to look at me and only see failure." Boom, I said it. That is how I was feeling about myself. "Wow, how could you fail like that? The 2nd week of BFL and now the 3rd week. Why can't you get your act together and get it right?" But then I looked at my failure (which the 2nd day wasn't a complete failure. I did eat BFL for part of the day) and tried to think of every excuse of why I failed and tried to squirm out of my guiltiness. I had a migraine on Sunday because of my past neck injury; it flairs up when I do intense arm work and runs. And our financial stresses really took a toll on me. Cole was home all day and can be very intense and high maintenance. In fact I went to my room and cried and prayed twice in 2 hours. Man, it was a hard day! I coulda let myself drown in my sorrows about what a loser I am. I coulda let myself give up on the BFL program (I mean, come on, I can't even get it right). I coulda stuffed myself today with bad carbs, and food loaded in sugar just because. I coulda thrown in the towel and said life is too hard right now I'll try again another time. But instead I decided to make today the best day that I could make it. I went on run. I made myself a BFL approved breakfast. I packed 2 BFL meals while I was out doing my errands. I decided to look in the mirror and tell myself that I am doing awesome. Because even though I messed up I didn't give in. I didn't let those thoughts defeat me. I decided to make a change and make this day the best day I can. Life is hard right now; really, really hard. But when I am focusing on making little changes, things seem to not be so hard. So when you've had a hard day and messed up (my goal is that those days are few and far between) don't throw in the towel, don't give up and never, ever, ever feel defeated. Brush yourself off, get up and keep on going! Because we love ourselves too much not to.