I am grateful for having perspective…at least now. During these past 2 years working on Ultimate You and trying to totally revamp my body and fit this idea of what the “fat loss expert” was supposed to look like, I got a little (ok, a lot) off track. I was dieting strictly for months – and months. I was working out twice a day and feeling totally beat up and injured. My sleep was horrendous, maybe 2 hours at best and I was feeling pretty tired – and wired. All the while my practice had nearly doubled in size. Needless to say I was busy – and stressed out! Oh, and we launched two websites and a product line during this time. It was insane. I hardly ever saw my friends or my boyfriend – and I live with him. When I did see him, my fuse was so short I snapped at him and hated myself afterwards. Was this healthy? Was this what it meant to have a great body? I pushed until I couldn’t push anymore with the torn hamstring, but this only made me tighten up my diet more as it was the only variable I could control just 2 months before book launch. Everyone was telling me I looked great – and honestly, it was probably the best my body has ever looked but in my head it was not enough, not nearly enough. I stressed every time I had to be on camera which made me lose even more sleep and have that nice puffy look I get on 2 hours of shut-eye. Great. I’d put off getting my headshots until the very, very last minute thinking “I can be just a little leaner in a few weeks”. When I finally had them done all I could think was, “What was I so worried about? They look fine”. What happened to me??? I realized I’d fallen into the trap I help so many of my patients side step – I was holding on so tight to the end goal that I couldn’t see that I’d changed a healthy process of a clean diet and exercise into a very unhealthy one. All the fret and worry I was doing put my relationship on rocky ground and I was looking better, but feeling worse about my body. My stress hormones were through the roof and my fat loss was stalled. Stalled big time. Which only made my cortisol rise even further. That lack of sleep, restricted diet and elevated stress hormones is a no win equation when it comes to fat loss, and I knew it. I’m the expert right? How did I end up victim to this?? I spent a few weeks resting, getting back to a more reasonable workout schedule, honored my injury and added in more carbs to my diet and voila! My weight finally shifted. The struggle then became how to stick on a reasonable fat loss nutrition plan as the months of restricting made it very hard to string together more than 4 days or so of clean eating. What I learned from this is a lesson I’ve had repeatedly in life and that’s holding on so tightly does not keep you safe, it suffocates you. I’m still on a mission to hit my lowest body fat percentage but my perspective is different. I’m doing it with less angst, more sleep and a little more love. And it’s working! I’ve always taken everything so seriously, including myself. I’m grateful that my perspective has finally started to shift.
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