I wasn’t hungry this morning, which is a good sign. It means my brain is adjusting to this new routine and it will send me fewer signals to eat more food. The negative side-effects of a caloric deficit need to be ignored in order to be overridden and for progress to be made.
It’s helpful to find things to do so food isn’t your main focus all day long.
I stayed on track with my nutrition plan yesterday, despite spending the morning driving to and from Eklutna to go kayaking. Since I eat all of my food for the day before 12:30pm, I had to be diligent about packing my remaining calories and then eating on time.
This is where intermittent fasting gets tricky.
Around 10:30am, I’m sitting in a double kayak in the middle of a freezing cold lake with a twitchy kid seated in front of me, and I’m trying to shove food in my face without tipping us into the water.
This is obviously not ideal, but it’s a perfect example of doing what needs to get done in order to stay on track.
In moments like this, I am keeping a promise to myself. While the current version of me is inconvenienced and uncomfortable, the future version of me will reap the benefits. This is what keeps me going.
At 1,800 calories a day, I never feel full. Even when I have to eat a lot of food in a short period of time. I have always had an insatiable appetite, even as a kid.
Growing up, eating a lot of food was encouraged and I was praised for it. I quickly learned I could receive a lot of positive attention when I ate more than the adults, or if I ate foods that other kids didn’t like. It was like a game to me, and I always won.
This routine eventually became part of my identity, and it was difficult to break away from it as I got older and realized my metabolism was not able to keep up with the large amount of food I wanted to eat every day.
In High School, I discovered how to alter my identity any way I wanted to. By 10th grade, I felt like I was becoming more of myself and by my senior year, I was ready to completely change my body with diet and exercise. The possibility that I would be able to look like the bodybuilders in my favorite magazines was real.
I was obsessed with having the capability of reinventing myself and deliberately building my body rather than just waking up every day looking and feeling the same way. If I wanted something to be different, for example, developing bigger arms, I could do that by lifting weights in the gym.
There is no better high than seeing your body change in ways you have only dreamed of. Sure, it’s difficult. But it’s important to understand that if you want to experience big changes, you have to do the work required to get there.
As I mentioned in my previous Blog post, this will feel like an inconvenience at best and torture, at worst. In these moments, you are training your mind. Don’t miss this opportunity by franticly looking for ways to escape and trying to make the pain stop. Stay with it.
If physical change were easy, everyone would do it. The truth is, most people are too busy living in the past or in the future. Worrying about money. Fighting with their spouse. Fretting over world events that are beyond their control. And worst of all, battling their mind all day long.
You can only control so much.
One of those things? Your daily decisions around food and exercise.