You Win Some, You Lose Some...

 


...And some you sit out!

It's been 10 days of behaving myself and I'm still not sleek! What gives with that?

That may sound silly, but that really is my usual approach to weight loss and fitness. Patience is not on my short list of virtues when giving up brownies is involved. I diet for a day, check the results, find none to speak of and say "Well that was useless!"

This time I'm trying to take a different approach. I'm remembering the "tree chopping" analogy. When chopping down a tree, in the beginning each blow with the axe seems futile and little progress is visible. It would be easy to believe it's useless and give up. If that were true nary a tree would ever have fallen! (Leave chain saws out of this! It's my story and I'm telling it my way!)

Anyway, it's easy to think the last blow with the axe before the tree falls was THE ONE that made the difference. Truth is, it started with the first and every blow after it was just as important as the last one.

SO, I'd been plugging along - reaching my 10,000 steps each day, enjoying the party on my wrist and feeling pretty darned good about myself then BAM!  - I ran smack into a brick wall yesterday. (Lets pretend the brick wall wasn't sleep deprivation because I'd stayed up till 2:30 in the morning. That way we can also pretend I was blameless.) 

I dragged myself through the day and by evening I'd only racked up a small percentage of my goal steps.

Enter evil idea. At a farewell get together for some moving friends, I noticed the enviable energy of a certain 4 year old girl. Suddenly it struck me that if I had her wear a certain cute little "ankle bracelet" while she was running around, and asked her to return it to me when it lit up, my dashboard would be none the wiser!  

My legs and feet loved the idea. My hips and thighs jiggled with joy. My heart, however, was having none of it . Bewildered, I headed home to do what I could on my own (cursing my party pooping heart the whole way.)

I danced, walked laps around my house, ran in place, and finally managed to get over 8000 steps before collapsing in a heap. Sad news - I didn't get the light show. (And we all know how much THAT means to me!) The happy news is that my new "fail" is 8000 steps instead of the maybe 16 steps a day I took before the fitbit.

MORAL OF THE STORY: SLEEP Even the woodcutter has to stop to sharpen his axe. Also, keep things in perspective. I'll take a 8000 step fail once in awhile. It wasn't my biggest axe swing, but it still counts.

MORAL OF THE STORY PART 2: Buy a chainsaw already!