I quit the gym. Well, let's be honest... I quit the gym months ago. I cancelled my membership this week.
Seems counter intuitive, right? Yes. But, let me lay it out for you.
I joined the gym close to work and started going at lunch time. It's just about the only chunk of free time I regularly have. Except I meet the family for lunch sometimes. And if I have to run errands, I try to do that at lunch because once my daughter and I get home after work, we generally don't go back out. I don't like cutting into the time we have to hang out and play at night. So, then I start going to the gym less frequently. And I start to beat myself up about it, making it even more daunting to go, until I finally don't go at all.
I do it with the gym, I do it with diets, I do it with most everything. Once I miss a meal, a day, have a bad week, etc. I'm done. I start to get down on myself about it and then I just lose any motivation I had. I have a really hard time getting past that mental process and gaining enough momentum to see me through the first few rough weeks.
So I quit the gym. I took that negative out of the equation. I'm focusing on food. I do the meal planning and am going to start Weight Watchers. Our dinners are always very healthy, but we'll be adding even more veggies to them. It's going to take a lot of extra planning on my part to put together healthy breakfasts and lunches and then remember to take them to work.
It also means I'm going to have to find a way to deal with my impulsive habits at work when I get stressed out and ticked off. No more running over to the drug store or grocery store for junk or diet Coke. No more. That is going to be the hardest part, I think, because those days are the ones that threw me off in the past. One bad decision and I'm mad at myself.
Most of all, I'm going to work on changing that mentality and working with myself rather than knocking myself down.
