New Year 2024. The Journey Continues. My "Origin Story"

 Here we are yet again at the start of a new year!  New year, new goals, new month, new week.... 

As part of this continued journey and sharing it here for anyone who chooses to read my words, I am going to go through some documenting of sharing my journey by following some prompting of doing some internal work. I'll be following prompted questions that I will answer in response. In the following week I hope to answer the questions in regards to "Where I am now" and "Where I want to go" in this   upcoming year and beyond.  

Today, the question is "What is your Origin Story"?  Every hero starts from somewhere.  a place they don't want to be. So what's the first thing you do?  You set a "goal." You set a destination. But you can't map out a plan until you know where you're actually starting from. So before diving into the how of achieving results, I must take a hard look at where I am currently. My "origin story."  Put in all of my frustrations and struggles. Highlighting what I do not like about where I am now.  Sharing so I can remember why I'm looking to make these changes in the coming year.

I feel like to reflect on where I am currently, I need to look back to the very beginning and all the struggles I've had along the way. Plus, I don't know where you may have jumped into my life in regards to my journey. I can only assume you know nothing about me and where I came from. I will try to keep this brief as possible.  Sometimes to understand where you are now, you need to reflect on where you started from and what got you to where you are today.

I grew up in a small farming community.  I lived out in farm country. Growing up as a child my family did not have a TV like most other families did.  So, as a result, most of my childhood was experienced through activities not associated with sitting on the couch watching TV.  I am the 3rd of 4 kids(at the time), I had an older brother and a younger brother, and an older sister. Most of my childhood memories are of playing with my brothers mostly.  We loved most ball sports; basketball, football, baseball, running in track and volleyball(mostly just me), also riding our bikes.  We were always told to go outside to play. So we were all basically pretty active as children and into our teenage high school years playing in said sports.  As a family, we had a large garden that my parents would grow and harvest every year.  We always had a plentiful supply of fresh veggies and even chickens for us to eat.  We were basically eating "organic" before "organic" was a "thing".  Jump forward a few years, into college, I also played basketball and volleyball through my 4+ years of college. I did gain the "freshmen 15" lbs. and that was basically the beginnings of my lifelong journey of yo-yo dieting/losing and gaining weight over the years.  In my early years of marriage and being pregnant or nursing four kids during a 10 year time span, I gained over 90 lbs!  Two years after my youngest child was born I had had enough of feeling insecure and not liking who I had become. I decided to embark on a weight loss journey to get back to the figure of my youth.  It took me 18 months to lose over 90 lbs! I was on a mission!  In a way, I was obsessed with reaching my goal weight!  It was then in 2006 that I started blogging and documenting my weight loss journey.  My original blog has since been deleted and removed and started this one a "few" years ago.  After my initial weight loss I have been struggling up and down with those last 15-20 lbs.  My weight had gotten down to 145 lbs at my lowest weight(back to my high school weight!) But over the past 10 years since my weight has fluctuated up to as high as 177 lbs! I've done several "challenges" over the years since where I've gotten my weight down to 150 lbs and then to just slack off my discipline and gained back up again in the low 170's. I never thought of it as such, but I have ended up the classic yo-yo dieter!  I'd do a program great for a few months, or even at best 10 months, to slowly gain that weight back on having fallen back into my old eating habits and lack of consistent workouts.  I've repeated this same story over and over again saying I didn't want to do that again, but yet....here I am...back in the low 170's!!  And NOW I am in my mid 50's and in peri-menopause phase of my life, which seems to make it harder. I actually did a great program last year (March 2022 - August 2022) and did amazing!  I felt like I was getting my strength back and got my weight back down to 150 lbs!!  I was so proud of myself!  I felt really good!  Then, I strained my lower back and it's been downhill ever since.  I stopped tracking my calories/macros.  I reverted back to my old habits...pizza, ice cream, alcohol!  Now I feel weaker than ever!! More flabbiness. All my clothes are tight!!  I just feel horrible that I've done this YET AGAIN!!  I'm in this literal cycle of up and down and then beating myself up for it yet again!  I've gone from being so proud of myself to hating where I am yet again. It's clear that I have not mastered the skill of "maintenance."  

So...this is a brief summary of the past 17 years! I want to FINALLY learn from my mistakes. I want to learn to FINALLY make my fitness a lifestyle and NOT a Yo-Yo cycle!  Can I dive into my frustrations and struggles and learn from them?! Can I finally see the pattern of success to only self-sabotage. Can I break that chain?  

Where am I now?

What habits and routines am I doing daily right now? I feel like I am a person who likes things easy.  I don't want to have to overthink things or worry about what I'm going to have to eat or how much time it's going to take to do something.  That's why it's been so easy to opt for pizza and ice cream and other easy frozen meals.  I did great with the macro/calorie tracking last year.  I am/have been an "all or nothing" type of person.  With all the programs and meal plans/tracking I've done over the years I'd do great until the "end" of challenge/program then I'd go back to my old ways of not really paying attention to those details. I think I felt like that by not continuing to track that I wouldn't know how bad I was doing and I'd feel less "self-guilt" for not making the better choices. "If I didn't log it, it didn't happen"...right?!?!  um no... but maybe that was my unconscious justification.  I reached my goal...I can slack off now.  umm. no.  I hurt my back, so why keep track anymore?!?   I feel like those were my "unconscious" justifications.  

My continued frustrations are that now all my pants are too tight! I get mentally overwhelmed with having to start all over again and trying to figure out all the "right" things to eat and how much and making sure I'm getting enough water, protein, vitamins, etc.  I really hated having to weigh and measure all my food.  I hate having to start all over again, not feeling like I've learned anything the past 17 years! I just want my fit body I had even just a little over a year ago! Now I have to go through all that struggle of feeling weak and having to work my ass off just to get back to where I was. 

My current lifestyle is 'what's easy?' I over think life enough as it is, I don't want to have to overthink what am I going to eat or what workout to do.  I'm also trying to navigate what is best for me in my perimenopause journey. I feel so overwhelmed with what I should be doing.  I do get "paralyzed" by all the choices and "should do's".  

If you've made it this far in my rambling, I applaud you!  I'm just throwing it all out there and what is going through my mind. This journey is many years in the making up to this point.  But I feel like I want to start afresh and to overthink or worry about what I did or did not do in the past!  I want to have the mindset that tomorrow, in the New Day, the New Year, that it is truly a Day 1. Let all my past failures and success be just part of my past story!  What happened 15 years ago, what happened yesterday doesn't matter and even compute in the evaluation of what I can do or will do in the future!  I want to start a clean slate like I've never done this before!