Where is your honour, dirtbag?

It's funny how sometimes lines from movies stick in your head and replay over and over again. I saw "Toy Story" with the kids on TV the other night and the line above comes from "The Sarge" who is the top dog toy soldier in Andy's Bucket O Soldiers kit. He asks the question of Woody, after Woody engineers a nasty accident for Buzz Lightyear.

All week I have kept asking myself the same question as I've struggled with balance - "where is your honour, dirtbag?" After my coaching session last week, I've come to the conclusion that something has got to give. I know I've said this before and I probably sound like a broken record, but that something "giving" is going to take some time because I still have to work out what that is! I'm always surprised by how much I am pushed in my own coaching sessions, it makes me think long and hard and the question of honour in the context of honouring myself with my own behaviour has been playing a pretty persistent loop in my thinking so far this week. I've caught myself being overstretched at both ends of the day and feeling rather stressed have asked myself the question, "where is your honour, dirtbag?" rather than mowing down the contents of the fridge with stress eating, baking or the like. Not that is is a regular occurrence for me, but it has been known to happen from time to time.

Today after 8 clients, I asked myself the question. The answer was taking an hour or so to decompress and read the paper and having oats for arvo tea. Consequently my belly feels full and happy and I am refreshed and ready to tackle the online side of my day.

The other thing I am making sure happens is getting my training in - after being sick I am finding the cardio a real struggle but punched out a good session on the elliptical, bike and rower and trained legs yesterday (I am in a world of DOMS today) and upper body today with the most conviction I've had since the surgery. It's time to start transitioning back from rehab into real life me thinks.

On the scale thing, weight has been up and down like a mad yo yo. But I feel my pants get looser every day despite some really wacko numbers and know that in the fullness of time, I am winning the race back to my happy place.

Day Five, Day Six - One Workout Better

Day Five: "training" involved a walk around the block with my two girls doing a bit of "sightseeing".
Day Six: Shannon and I decided to meet up for coffee and chat and I made sure that I whipped into Fitness First and put in 25 minutes on the treadmill. I started off at 5.4km/hr but had to drop to 5km/hr. I am officially the "Treadmill Slayer" - over 5k/hr goal achieved! I had a ball catching up with Miss Shannon. After hubs picked me up we went looking at display villages for new house ideas and I did a lot of walking and going up and down stairs - definitely an active day had by all.
Eating: Have eaten really consistently all day :)

Thoughts about today: The hardest thing coming back from injury or illness is comparing your current self to your pre injury self - this happens to me all the time in the fitness arena. What has really hit home to me is to focus on celebrating the now and the milestones that you achieve in the current journey. Rather than thinking of myself teaching RPM HiPerformance, I am celebrating that I am one step further into my recovery and fitness than I was yesterday - after all, today I made my "treadmill slayer" goal. I had been thinking about when I would next compete, my next marathon, my next adventure race and realized that I had been thinking too big. It is just too much to think of right now - the same feeling I had when I was looking down the barrel of losing 30 odd kilos. It is amazing, however, how much progress you make when you break things into smaller chunks. Tomorrow I see the physio - I have a little less pain in the shoulder now, so things are looking positive there - still a long way to go, but yes, I am one workout better than I was yesterday.

More from my couch

I regularly receive email about this blog and of course email from clients. I'd like to share some of my philosophies with some questions and answers.

Why do I have to work so hard? Such and such a person is doing this and getting 'x' results!

Firstly, I want to ask you who you are taking the journey for - yourself or "such and such"? The truth is that everyone's realities when it comes to health and fitness are different. I have to work hard to stay healthy and maintain my weight, so does Craig Harper, yet you don't hear either of us bitching about how "hard it is". We just accept it, deal with it and do the best we can. I have other clients with extremely robust metabolisms but poor thought processes surrounding them. The key is accepting and understanding YOUR REALITY right now. Work with what you've got RIGHT NOW and start accentuating the positive (see below). Live your journey for YOU.

Why can't I eat just for the sheer pleasure of it?

Hell, I'm not stopping you!. It's called a "planned indulgence" - yes, that's right, something that you eat just because it tastes good. Life is too short to eat crappy food. Life is also too short to eat yourself comatose having a "free day". The only freedom I see is freedom from common sense.

"You made me keep a log and it triggered me to overeat."

Must have been a powerful piece of paper! I've never known anything inert to trigger certain behaviours. My advice: take responsibility for what you did and try to work out the situation that triggered it. If you still come back to a sheet of paper or a spreadsheet, you need a thicker skin, Tiger.

PS - many studies have shown that keeping a food log to be extremely beneficial with long term weight control.

"You eat perfectly all the time, but I can't over this time of year"

Hello, staying well isn't about being perfect all the time. It's about being consistent. Try substituting your can't with won't and re read the statement. Again, it's all about choice. It's commendable to be intuitive with your eating and being more aware of oneself. But it doesn't do you any good having no modicum of character and discipline in your life. Allowing yourself to "eat intuitively" does not mean "I can shovel heaps of poor quality crap down the old pie hole just because I feel like it". There are other overriding factors such as overall health and well being that factor in. Loving yourself and being intuitive sometimes means saying "no".

PS - I am far from perfect, but I'm pretty consistent.

"Isn't 'eating clean' just a pretty name for another diet?"

Depends how you define "diet". If you're talking caloric restriction, I'm in the "no" camp. Eating clean aka eating healthfully and staying away from highly processed stuff is beneficial to health and sporting/life performance.

"yeah, but" and "I can't"

This means a) I have an excuse for everything and b) I won't.

PS - I never saw this couch jumping episode but if I saw my kids doing this, I'd throttle em :)

Enjoy the journey!

I had a good day and taught RPM this morning at Toowong. I had a wonderful surprise this morning - Alicia came to my class - and she is looking so lean and "killer" (pardon the picture) that I almost didn't recognize her! She has made some amazing changes to her body and it was so much fun catching up with her. It just meant I really got to focus more on caning the old legs as I taught class! I have still got killer DOMS from all of those weights I have been hoiking about this week.

Tonight I heard an absolutely fantastic talk about what it was to be really free. Basically the guts of the message was that to achieve true freedom you need to be firm with yourself about what it is you're actually doing, as opposed to mollycoddling yourself and "waiting for it to happen". Who said "time waits for no man?" Thomas Moore? I can't remember. Anyway, I think the statement is so true. If you set yourself a goal, move towards it with full intention with the aim of truly living it along the way. This is another goal of my preparation - to fully live in every training session and every meal and to move with mindfulness and with purpose - to live my own personal truth.

Wow, that was deep...but hey, that's what comp prep does to you - illuminates other things in life which are just as important!