There Will Be Setbacks: Just Pick Yourself Up and Dust Yourself Off

There is nothing more discouraging than the dreaded setback. It happens to everyone, and you think that you’re prepared for it, but it still manages to rattle you. I refer to this as my “pity party for one.”

When I started this weight loss journey, I jumped in with both feet. I was organized and planning! I had my food journal mapped out with all the appropriate meals for the day. I had stocked up on the healthy foods needed to keep me satisfied. The gym bag was packed, and I was on a mission. I admit that the first few weeks were really difficult, but I was seeing results on the scale. Each week I was averaging about a two-pound weight loss. I was feeling confident and excited about my progress…there was no stopping me!

However, reality set in. One week when weighing in, I lost half a pound. How can that be? I was eating right and exercising. This was so devastating. It made me want to scream... literally. But, I had to keep going. I wasn’t happy, but I figured that this wasn’t worth giving up. After almost two years, there are still those weeks on the scale where I am super excited, and others where I can feel the tears coming. 

Unfortunately, food is not the only part that can hand you a setback. As I am exercising regularly, there are definitely days where the aches and pains are a little more substantial. I admit that I try to just shake them off at times and keep going because I don’t want to deviate from my routine. However, injuries do happen at times and you may need to take some time off.

Here’s a true, rather embarrassing story I will share with you. While working on the rowing machine recently, I managed to go flying off the seat. Yes, I know it’s a machine where I am already sitting down, and it happened so quickly, that I was literally tangled in it. What a sight! Anyway, the point of the story is that when my back came crashing down, I knew I was hurt. The pain was unbelievable. It was the kind of pain where you laugh and cry at the same time. This three-second fiasco would now set me back greatly as far as workouts. I was extremely limited in my flexibility and mobility. I had to take time off from my regular exercise routine, and start out slow when I was able to start again. The hardest part was that I wanted to be able to keep going, but physically couldn’t. 

There’s one other type of setback that I wanted to bring up, and that’s the one that you can’t see with the human eye. It’s the one in your head that tells you that you can’t do something.  While working with John (my trainer) recently, he asked me to jump up onto a box. I’ve done this exercise before, but the boxes were lower to the ground. I practiced a few times on the lower ones, and then went to try this more challenging, slightly taller one. I was frozen. This task seemed so unattainable, so difficult, and the thought of not being successful was greater than the actual task. 

After many attempts, I did eventually jump up onto it, but I knew that I could do better. I had physically worked so hard to get to this point, yet I kept overthinking it. You start to go back in your mind to where you first started, when jumping wasn’t even possible. You start thinking “I can’t do this...I’m not ready…I’m going to fail at this…it’s too hard.” No matter how much John believed in me, and how badly he tried to convince me that this was possible, I didn’t believe in me. This rattled my confidence. The thought of taking a few days off from the gym crossed my mind, thinking maybe I needed to take a break or regroup.

However, I got up the next morning and got back in the game. Walking away would have been the easier choice, but definitely not the right choice for me. This type of setback is a little more tricky, and powerful. It’s a matter of retraining your brain to the new you…the stronger, healthier, confident you.

In the past, there are so many times when I came to that “fork in the road” of whether I keep going or just give up. Unfortunately, I often chose to give up and convince myself so many times that I’ll just try again next week or next month. But as I became more physically fit, I became mentally stronger. Was it easy? No…it never is. This is when you make the decision that you are stronger than “it”…the setback, the injury, the bad number on the scale. It has taken me a long time to learn and absorb the fact that success isn’t just measured by how many pounds I have lost in a week, or how many times I made it to the gym.

It’s the milestones and progress that I’ve made since I’ve started that I need to keep remembering. This is the fuel to keep moving forward. This is the time when you reach out to that . Look wherever you have to for that motivation or inspiration to keep going. I seek it out often, and am not ashamed of it. These are the weeks where I need to reflect back and see if there were some smarter choices that I could have made as far as food, or worked a little harder on my workouts. 

Sometimes it’s just unexplained, and I need to keep at it to get over the hurdle. I compare this to a roller coaster..it’s a physical and emotional journey filled with “ups and downs.” No one said this would be easy, but the prize at the end is well worth it…my health and fitness!

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