On or Off

TSFL has an awesome resource available to people who are using their program.  It's called Support in Motion.  I am a huge advocate & believer in the power that comes from journaling-and always have more success myself when I write down what I eat each day.  For the past 8 years, I've kept a food journal about 85% of the time.  I have many different sizes & colors of notebooks filled with what & when I ate certain foods.  It's guaranteed that the times I was feeling good & reaching my goals, I was also keeping a food journal.  Accountability-even to ourselves-holds us to a higher standard & helps us become more fully able to accomplish our goals. 

Support in Motion is essentially a glorified food journal.  You keep track of what you eat each day, but also have the capability of journaling how you felt, keeping track of your exercise, logging your weight/measurements, etc., and also joining & reading the community member boards.  There are many helpful topics pertaining to the Take Shape for Life program and I started reading a thread about people who have a hard time getting back on the program after they go off (before they reach their ultimate goal). 

One person said something that struck a chord within me and had me thinking for a long time after.  She said she had been struggling with this herself and she talked to her coach about it.  Her coach said, "You're either on the program or you're off."  Simple as that.  She then said that after she'd heard that, she evaluated her behaviors and how she'd been acting.  When honest with herself, she realized she'd been off the program for about a month. 

This resonated so deeply with me because July was quite an off month for me if I was being honest with myself.  I got kind of hung up on a few things in my mind & lost focus for a while.  I started making small off decisions; I let myself snack a bit when I shouldn't have, didn't take care of myself by getting enough sleep, didn't start exercising regularly, drank less water & more diet coke, and just made some bad-albeit conscious-decisions about food.  I recognized I'd been telling myself I was doing all I could, when I really wasn't.  I needed to recommit & re-decide to be fully on the program or off of it, but I couldn't be both & I needed to make a decision one way or the other.  I decided that night to be on and August started off with a bang again.  July wasn't my biggest losing month (only 5 pounds the whole month), but it may have been my greatest learning month yet and that makes it pretty valuable. 

Decide today to be on or off, but don't straddle the fence or do it halfheartedly.  Just go full force & do it!  I promise you'll see results & your hard work will pay off.  And if-like me-you have one of my July months in August, recommit yourself for September {or even better, for tomorrow!} and get back on track.  And remember, if you want to be somewhere specific in a year, you have to do something about it today!