One of the most common phrases I hear in Broken Arrow gyms is “well it was going well, but I have sort of stalled at this point.” Now sometimes there can be a reason for stalling. Sometimes your body is making adjustments to the food and workouts you are putting yourself through, and sometimes we stop following the programs and plans we originally did and simply claim our bodies are “stalling”. Let us take a closer look at our direction first and see what we must do in order to succeed every time.
Most of the time when we face adversity, we typically quit. (no, no, I am not talking about you.) Often times we move in a specific direction, hit a temporary wall, and then move in another direction. I ran into a friend here at The Hub Gym, my favorite of all Broken Arrow gyms, who was ready to start his fitness journey this time. He had tried before, and each time he started, hit some minor wall or issue, and gave up shortly after that. However, one thing he always did was start again. Although he has not hit his goal yet, each time he ends up making a little bit more progress than the last time. He started close to three hundred and seventy five pounds, and at this current time he is only three hundred and twenty pounds. He has lost fifty-five pounds over the last two years and this never would have happened if he did not keep going! Each time he starts, he is starting with more knowledge of how to overcome the issues he had previously. We can all learn so much from this! Take time and realize why you did not succeed previously. My friend saw the first time he started that he could not starve himself. If he did not eat, his body did not let him continue to train. After taking a month or so off from the gym, he came back. He had lost fifteen pounds initially, and then gained back ten when he fell off the wagon. The next time he came in he made sure to eat better amounts of food, but this time he still was trying to out train a bad diet. He ate enough food, in fact too much, then tried to work out two times every day and never allowed himself to rest. He also had his “cheat meals” all too often and made very little progress this round. His weight decreased two pounds, but in this way he was still able to build more substantial muscle mass. He became frustrated with his lack of progress, and fell off the wagon again for about two months. He then came back and got more serious again. This stage was where he began to make more progress. First, he initially hired a trainer. For a month he hired a trainer for two days a week, and he still came three more days on his own. No more two a days, and no more every day. He also started better cleaning up his diet to make sure he made better lasting progress, optimized fat loss, and optimized muscle gain. He came into the Hub Gym several days a week, made more progress than he ever had previously, and he worked on having a routine he could easily stick to. He then proceeded to lose twenty-five pounds over the coming months. When my friend hurt his knee trying to run a 5K race, he got frustrated and took a significant time off. He did gain back about ten pounds, but kept better control of his food. He started back at the gym and decided to take more care and not just do so many different things. He focused on losing weight, decreasing impact on his body. After he started this most recent time, it looks like he will be in it for the long haul. Keeping impact down, strength training, proper nutrition, and taking care of his injuries before they become a problem.
I know another girl at Broken Arrow gyms who fell into the opposite issue. She kept trying and trying, but whatever she did was never “enough” for her, and so when she would not lose twenty pounds in a week, she would binge and purge her body. Every time we tried to improve her relationship with food with little impact. She would not focus on just loving herself and giving herself grace; she always had to achieve or she would instantly quit. Her direction was always off from the path that would lead her to success. The next issue she ran into was making fitness punishment for her not doing a good enough job at something else in her life. She would do grueling two hour plus workouts after a week of not consuming perfect nutrition, then not show up at all because she would say “It’s pointless, why would I eat well if I’m not making any progress?” Little did she know that the reason she did not make any progress was because she only ever tried for small spurts of time, and would then punish herself for not being perfect, and would give up her nutrition for a week when it did not go the way she wanted to. On a weekly basis we saw hard work, not enough progress, binge, purge, excessive exercise, and all the while never learning the right way because she never truly followed the path for any significant period of time. If at first you do not succeed, keep going until you do! One or two pounds lost is amazing progress for a weeks time, so there was no reason she should have been upset, but because it was not ten pounds, it was not enough. She has since starting, made some progress, but it was because she dropped the things in her life that were too much for her to deal with at the time. Loving herself is her only goal right now, and she is making progress. Soon, she will be another example of why you keep going when you do not succeed at first. She will be a success if she does not give up, and you will be a success in your health and fitness if you do not quit. You will overcome any adversity you face, you need only to keep going.
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