I was going through some videos that were filmed at a training course back in late 2011 and much to my surprise there I was.........
It made me pause and think back over the last 4-5 years. Boy a lot has happened!!!!
2010 was when my transformation journey started. Now most people think physical when they read the word Transformation - fat loss, getting a body that looks smoking hot. But for me my transformation journey was all about the mental - the relationship I had with food and training.
I was a chronic over-exerciser.
At the gym every morning - alternating between cardio and weights (well what I thought was a weights program back then!!) And focusing on calories-in VS calories-out. How many calories did I burn off whilst on the treadmill?
Thankfully that started to change when I started reading articles and reports that came from reputable sources - not the ones that take research articles and twist them to suit their own agenda.....(look out for words like "might" that are substituted by "can" "will"). To be able to make food choices that reduced the fear of getting fat was a big help and provided me with a safety net to move forward and gave me security that what I was doing was going to help me help my body and keep it as healthy as it can be for as long as it can be.
Don't think for one minute that my journey was a straight, flat one. Mine was one that was littered with obstacles, hiccups, distractions, and massive pit stops.
I had a lot of baggage to deal with. A lot of fear.
But I wasn't alone on my journey and have found many new friends along the way who have been there to help me back up again when those obstacles laid me out flat.
October 2011
This photo was taken approx 12 months after I'd started my journey. I'd had the toughest few months before this was taken of my entire life (well at least that I can remember). Queen's Birthday Weekend 2011 I held the hand of a person who had held a special place in my heart for nearly 20 years as he breathed his last and let go of the immense pain that he was in because of cancer. He'd lived in Adelaide and I was in Melbourne and I hadn't been able to visit him for close to 6 months, so when I saw him that weekend I was shocked. I had no idea how much he had detoriated and was not prepared at all. Not prepared for the worst to happen (not that I think you ever are). The week between his death and funeral was the week from hell and yet I was back at work the Monday after his funeral on the Friday.
I felt like I had the rug pulled out from underneath me but I had one recollection from that week, that I said to myself - this is your chance to prove to yourself that you have become a stronger person and you are not going to relapse and throw away all the effort and hard work that you have put in to changing your attitude about yourself. I won't lie to you and say that I didn't have a few times where it was all a bit much but the relapses didn't lead to a permanent return to old habits.
But as you can see from that photo above I didn't have much (any definition) I look skinny and weak - which I was!!!
Looking back on the last 5 years and how I was after that Adelaide experience I have realised how much of a zombie that I was. Somehow I managed to keep going to work. Somehow I managed to achieve training goals - ran a marathon in 2012, did a few 10kms in 2013.
(but as you can see I wasn't LEAN - people think that running is the BEST exercise to burn fat....pffffft.)
I kept chipping away at my relationship with food - we had lots of counselling sessions did food and I!! It wanted to love me and love me and love me however I was still a bit reluctant to hold it's hand.
Like any important relationship if you keep working away at it and doing the the necessary things, that relationship becomes healthier, happier and stronger.
Many other testing times have come and gone. Making the decision to move from Melbourne to Ballarat and start my business from scratch would have to rate up there pretty high, but I know that because I have the right systems, structures, knowledge and skills to back me up.
I can stay on a pretty even keel and those bad habits have been banished and replaced by better ones, forever.
October 2015 - still looking pretty lean despite not lifting for the last 6 weeks. It's the food I eat on a regular basis that keeps me like this.
Life - it can throw some pretty awesome curve balls at you! But you know what, the more you practise hitting those curve balls the better you will become at spotting them and dispatching them out of the ball park.
We get just one shot at life....make the most of it with the time you have.
