100 Days Towards Myself

Friday February 14, 2013

Day 1

I woke up this morning, earlier than I have in a while, but later than I had hoped. That’s still a win, right? I don’t really know…….. if I’m being honest!

I have this HUGE fear of failure and in my mind, anything less than perfection is failure.

Why is that?

That is something I have been thinking about today. I’m unsure why I believe that.

There is a huge part of me that wants to control everything. That same part says that if I’m not doing things 100% perfectly, then I’ve failed. So, I’m trying to be gentler on myself.

I’d planned on doing things perfectly. Only whole foods. 3 times a week of exercise. Only 2 cups of coffee per day. Getting up to start the day at 6:30am or on the days that I’m exercising…..exercise at 5:30 for 30 mins until 6am and then shower and get ready for the day until 6:30am and be ready to go at 6:30am.

I gout out of bed at 6:45am, but I was awake at 6:30am. I don’t usually crawl out of bed until 7:30am and that is only because that’s about the latest I can leave it and still get Siah to school on time.

I had drank more than 2 cups of coffee this morning before I even realized it. Once I realized it, I stopped drinking and turned off the coffee pot.

I ate eggs, with green onions and orange peppers and proscuitto cooked until it was crispy like bacon. Then I ate more proscuitto and then even more. I justified it by telling myself that it was protein so I was ok to eat it so that I wouldn’t be so hungry again soon. And then I told myself that it was only 70 calories for the 2 slices and so in total, I ate 210 calories (of the proscuitto)…..which was probably less that 2 slices of regular bacon….but really…….it just tasted really good and I was feeling stressed.

My sister messaged me before stopping by this morning and asked what I wanted from Starbucks. I could have said nothing, but I asked for a 2 pump sugar free vanilla Americano. On Atkins, that would be a zero carb drink, but my “plans” said that I was not supposed to be eating chemicals and I was not supposed to be drinking any more coffee today…..

So have I failed…….or am I just making choices?

Are those choices leading down a positively charged path or a negatively charged path?

I had a green smoothie for lunch. Spinach, banana, orange, strawberry, mango and coconut oil.

I’ve set out on this 100 day journey and I’m not exactly certain what I’m doing. I want to lose weight. I want to feel better. I want to not ache and need pain killers. I want to have more energy and to feel stronger. I want to not feel tired ALL THE TIME. I want to ask myself some tough questions and hopefully find some answers.

I need to make some changes, but I want to figure out why I’m doing some of the things that I do, so hopefully I can make changes that will ultimately impact me LONG TERM in a positive way.

I lost 10 pounds in January. I set a goal to lose 10 lbs and I accomplished it. I’ve gained back 7 lbs in the last two weeks. All my hard work….all my effort…..all the denying and self haggling… what was all that effort for?

I don’t want to keep doing this. I don’t want to run this cycle, over and over and over again.

I’m nervous and unsettled. I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to put this “out there” and then have people see that I’m a failure when I falter. I almost feel like its inevitable and that makes me feel horrid too. Like I’m just a failure waiting to happen.

Why? Why do I see myself as a failure? Why do I think that I will let myself and others down? Why do I have such a negative viewpoint of myself? What caused this? What contributed to this? Why do I feel like I am “unacceptable?”

So then, will I carry on and actually accomplish this in order to “look good” in front of others or will I accomplish this “for myself”? Or will I “fail” and accept that I am human and it really doesn’t matter if I falter, because what matters is that I carry on. Or will I fail and then give up because it’s too difficult or too much effort or because I really don’t want to have to do this…….I don’t know.

What I do know is that I want to be happy and accept myself. I want to be able to accept that I am imperfect and I don’t have to be perfect in order to be accepted or acceptable. I want to not feel so much pressure from myself to live up to some impossible standard.

It frustrates me because I actually do think I am a pretty good person, but then I wonder if I am acceptable because I try so hard to “be perfect” and that if I eased up on myself then maybe I wouldn’t be as “good” or “acceptable.” It gets pretty messed up inside my head and there is a part of me that wants to keep hashing it all out, right here-right now, so that I could figure it out and have it “done.”

But, I’m going to accept that the answers are not so clear to me at this exact moment and I’m going to walk away from this and “let it sit.” I’m not a failure for not figuring this all out right now. I’m not a failure just because I don’t have all the answers.

I’m just me. An imperfect person who keeps putting one foot in front of the other hopefully in a forward direction. And for right now……I’m choosing to be okay with that.