“Break on Through to the Other Side”

I intend to go back to sharing more about myself in other postings so that you can relate and stuff.  But for right now I am facing a dilemma. It is not a crisis situation or anything however it is stressing me out.  You see I’m stuck; stuck in a rut. I am referring to my inability to improve my performance in the CrossFit exercises and therefore become fitter and lose more weight.  Oh yes for a while I was able to tell myself things to make me feel better about being in a rut.  Things like – I’m just taking it easy because I’m trying to recover from the competition (the games).  The games are a whole other story that I will get to in another posting.  Or things like – it’s natural to stabilize once in a while; you can’t always make great gains. Another really good thing that I tell myself is that of course I couldn’t go at the exercises very hard because I was doing that crazy Paleo challenge and I was in a weaker state due to lack of glucose in my system.  That sounds very logical and almost scientific.  So I love that. 

I’ve got all these great reasons why I’m doing just under my best every single time I go in to workout.  If they are so great why do I have this gnawing terrible guilt feeling all the time? Because I am guilty that’s why.  I am guilty of not putting my best effort out there.  I am guilty of putting on a charade to my workout buddies and hoping that they think I gave it my all.  I want the high fives and back slaps at the end of the workout to mean something; to be real. I am guilty of cheating myself of the feeling of true accomplishment and the physical benefits derived from that.  None of these reasons are true reasons.  They are convenient excuses.

So why am I not really giving it my all?  I don’t know if I have an answer.  Somehow I have lost that spark, that motivation that I had just a couple of months ago.  Some of it is due to the fact that I came in last at the competition which made me question my abilities.  Am I fooling myself thinking that I was some kind of badass?  Because obviously not.  Part of the answer lies in the fact that even after all that stringent clean eating from the Paleo challenge I only managed to lose 6 lbs total in 4 weeks.  What is wrong with my body and maybe it’s just hopeless for me.  Yes this is whining but this is also self-reflection.  Somehow, some way I have to find a way to break out of this mode of thinking.  I have to be able to get back into that state of mind where I was highly motivated to improve.  I want that feeling again. I can almost taste what it felt like.  I want that rush that came from me putting every bit of what I had into a workout and coming through the other side in a state of intoxicating euphoria.  Ok, ok, too much drug allegory but that is the truth.

I am going to make a promise to myself that for the next two weeks I will consciously make an effort to recognize my level of effort every time I work out.  I may not be able to raise that level up every time but at least I will be honest with myself and not pretend. The first step to solving any problem is to first recognize there is a problem; so that’s what I’m doing.  The hope is that in acknowledging the reality I will have no choice but to address it.  I can either choose to do nothing or I can choose to “Break on Through to the Other Side”