Hey everyone, here is a beautiful email Lannie sent me yesterday! Please take the time to read it! Lannie I think you are further ahead than you think that you are, building small lifestyle changes instead of just all or nothing. I admire your tenacity and heart! Thanks for writing this!
Lannie-
Taking back pancake Sundays
Tyler has asked all of us to post an update of the last 100 days, so here is mine. I am going to follow Tyler’s example of being completely open an honest here for everyone to read. Take away from it what you will. I just hope that at least one person out there can find some inspiration in my words.
Where to begin? The past 100 days have been quite the roller coaster for me. There have been some significant highs and some pretty miserable lows. For the past month, I have patently avoided posting anything to the blog for many reasons. Excuses abound. The most damaging one being that I spend a lot of time in my own head thinking that no one would genuinely be interested in my story so why bother telling it (there is a life time of ugly baggage there that still needs to be addressed). The sugar free challenge did not go well for me. I have used every excuse for not successfully reaching the end of 100 days sugar free. I lost the support of my home team. My wife and daughter succumbed to ice cream and cookies about 6 weeks in and it was not long until I followed. Such is life.
Problems began to arise for me very early in to the challenge. I spent the entire fall and winter in the gym, 5 days a week working my ass off to stay in shape and prepare for spring. Everything was going along swimmingly. I was right on track and then the sugar challenge began. I completely fell apart. As we all know from experience, we are our own worst critic and I was being especially harsh this time around. I spent long hours in the gym preparing for this spring and in my eyes the results just were not there. Top that off with a nice bout of spring flu that lasted several weeks, the loss of support from the home team and I was doomed.
I spent a couple of weeks feeling miserable, forcing myself to go to the gym, struggling every day to not eat junk food. I finally decided to not fight it anymore. If I wanted those M&M’s I ate them. If I didn’t feel like going to the gym, I didn’t. You would think that allowing myself to have what I wanted would make me feel better and you would be wrong. It only made me more miserable….every mouth full of Hersey’s kisses – MISERABLE. As I like to say, I had dug the hole and now I was pulling the dirt in on top of myself. I had fallen off the wagon in grand fashion. Worst of all, my workouts were no longer enjoyable. I painfully realized how important they were in maintaining not only my physical health, but also my mental health. I had exhausted the old Nike maxim of “Just do it” and had run out of inspiration.
I saw that the only way out of this mess was to fix one problem at a time. I enlisted the help of some amazing friends (including Tyler who endured my bitching on more than one occasion). They helped me put some new life into my workouts. I slowly began to get that enjoyment and stress release from my trips to the gym that I so desperately missed and needed. During that time, I made my best effort to stay sugar free. Needless to say, I am still working on it. I made the decision to not beat myself up about it. If I ate a bowl of ice cream -Oh Well. I will try to skip the ice cream next time. In other words, I took back my chocolate chip pancake Sundays and instead of looking at it as a failure; I viewed it as a compromise. I would say that I am 85% sugar free and for now, that is not bad. The other 15% will slowly become a part of my life.
I can’t finish without addressing the culmination of the Sugar Free challenge, the Tough Mudder race in Big Bear. Before I begin, I want to thank Ashley and Tyler for being our fearless team leaders. If it weren’t for them I would never have run the race, let alone enjoyed staying comfortably in a posh cabin 5 minutes from the course with lots of good food and new friends to share the experience with. You guys are some of the best friends that anyone could ever ask for – so thanks (I know, I know – get a room). I probably pushed myself harder than I ever have in my life and it just turns out that I did well. That is a small reward compared to what I gained from the whole experience.
So, you wanted some after pictures? I will not put anyone through the uncomfortable experience of having to look at me in my underwear anymore. So here ya go. Just look at the smile on that face!
