Throughout life, we have all experienced failures and have had to bounce back from these failures. My biggest focus in life right now is weight loss, which obviously has room for many failures.
I was watching this show on TLC called “Extreme Weight Loss.” In this particular episode, this guy lost 204 pounds, which is something to be celebrated. However, after that point, he sort of began to fall off, and ended up gaining back 50 pounds. He and his trainer were both pretty stunned. But they didn’t give up. He got back on track and ended up losing another 100 pounds, for a total of 304 pounds lost.
He said something that has really stuck with me ever since: “You can fall without failing.” With anything in life, there is bound to be setbacks. Weight loss is no different. While I haven’t gained any weight in the three months I have been on this journey (in fact, I have lost weight every single week), there has been days where I’ve felt like I have completely failed because I ate too much, or I didn’t eat healthy calories for the day. On these days, I would feel really down on myself and feel as if this one single day would affect my entire weight drastically. What I had to learn is to forgive myself for having a bad day. You cannot be so tough on yourself that it makes you want to quit. It is important to give yourself room for mistakes and know that just like with anything you do, mistakes are inevitable.
The reality is that one day isn’t going to make or break anything. That one piece of pizza isn’t going to make the scale go up by five pounds. That one piece of cake isn't going to erase everything you have already accomplished. The important thing that I learned to make myself focus on is that there is always a new tomorrow. Whether I had a great or awful day today, there is always a tomorrow that I want to try to do even better. The failures won’t ever define my journey. It is the failures that push me to do even better the next day.
I have “fallen” many days throughout my three month weight loss journey, but I haven’t failed. In fact, I am doing the opposite of failing; I am winning with every single decision that I make to move my health in the right direction.
