Also, I took some progress photos last night but I'll have to wait to upload them till this weekend since they're on my laptop at home.
So, this Sunday will be the last day of week 16, and monday will be the official start of week 17. The significance is rather great - 16 weeks = 4 months :) And it's been a while since I've reflected on my journey in this blog, so I thought I'd take a moment to record special thoughts, feelings and milestones that I've experienced recently. I got so wrapped up in writing pieces that I thought others would find interesting, that I failed to remember that this blog is also supposed to be for me, a diary of sorts, for me to capture this time in my life to look back on later.
On that note, I'd like to dwell a little on my fascination of what I've accomplished. They say you should celebrate the little things, not just the end result, and I am such a proponent of that. Every day I go having stuck to my diet, drank my 80 fl. oz. of water, refrained from eating that night time snack and chosen to go to bed without it instead, or even rested when my OCD was telling me to go to the gym despite my aches and pains... all of these little victories are what fuel me. They make the next day that much easier.
Each little victory makes me a stronger person on the inside. Each time I overcome something, when another thing comes along the way, I am that much more confident that I can overcome it. And at the end of the day, I honestly believe that one of the reasons I didn't do this diet and fitness thing much sooner, was that I tried but I went into it with a weak mind. I wanted all the results with none of the work. I lacked the patience and dedication to commit to a program and stick to it. I would give it a couple days, even a couple weeks, but I would fail because I wasn't doing it correctly and/or I didn't have that prize in my mind and the hunger for it, and the belief that I really could accomplish it.
One of my favorite movies of all time is Gattaca with Ethan Hawke. It is a quiet movie, a thinker. But I particularly love it because nothing struck me more clearly than a quote I heard from it when I was 15 years old and obese and in the throes of my own family turmoil and adolescent issues. The scene was when Ethan Hawke -- an "invalid" who was only allowed to do bottom-feeder blue collar jobs due to his genetic inferiority -- was washing windows at what appears to be a futuristic NASA compound. His dream in life was to be an astronaut and go to space but, of course, his genetic inferiority came along with a heart defect that made his prospects of going to space even more impossible. And as he stood on the roof of the NASA compound washing windows at dusk in his janitorial uniform, he paused for a moment to watch a vessel blast off into space. This is a still from that scene, along with what he uttered in a passive narrative voice:
I firmly believe I failed all those prior times at achieving what I had ALWAYS dreamed of, because the task at hand just seemed to insurmountable. When I took an honest look in the mirror, even made it a week into my diet, the realization of the task at hand asked for too much of me than I was willing to give. It wasn't until I got right up into the touchy-feely of what I would really have to commit to it, that I realized my dream was impossible.
But that's the thing, and it's what I wasn't able to learn until I went on this all-or-nothing trip: it wasn't the dream that was impossible; it was my lack of willingness to give what it took to achieve it.
Sometimes, when we see the mountains of life we need to climb, we get desperate for a short cut or a way around. All we want is to be on the other side, dammit! We don't want to do the hard work, we are too tired or lazy or otherwise not willing to give what it takes. And these days, people try short cuts left and right, and only find themselves more miserable, discouraged, and lost. Had they just faced the challenge head on, they would have at least been that much closer to making it over the mountain!
But it isn't until we decide to do it the right way, just close our eyes and start trucking up that mountain head first, that we make it a certain way up the mountain and suddenly learn the lesson we were meant to have learned all along - that it isn't about getting to the top of the mountain, but about learning to climb. You see, all of the fruits of our labor are really found in the labor itself. Of course we want to reach our goal and obtain the fruits of the end-result. But I think that all of us, when we get to some certain point in our ascent (it varies for everybody), we come to the realization that all of the enjoyment of our giving our blood, sweat and tears to achieve or goals, isn't so much in actually achieving them, but is actually in the very heat of battle. The true enjoyment is having your eyes burn as the sweat cascades into them. The true enjoyment is when your lips snarl up into an animalistic-like curl as you will yourself with nothing but pure brute force to spin that much faster to the tempo of the music. The true enjoyment is adding on that extra 10lb weight plate, knowing this squat is going to hurt like hell, but NOT BEING AFRAID OF THE PAIN because you are excited to prove that you can overcome it.
At the end of the day, what we really get in return for giving everything to our diet and fitness endeavors, is the explosion of strength we feel on the inside that we can overcome anything, that we can have anything, that those voices in our head and in the media and coming from the lips of our enemies ARE WRONG. We are given a gift of power and a right to self-respect that no one can touch - not a single person can take it away. Not a single nay-sayer, not a single loved one or family member or friend who stabbed us in the back or said they couldn't love us for how we did or didn't look... Not a single soul can take away the strength and the knowledge that a 25-lb bicep curl freely offers.
It is possible for all of us. My favorite quote that I learned in a blog about losing the last 10 lbs goes as such, and it is so true:
The task is simple: Climb the mountain. The question is, are you willing to give what it takes? Your dream is entirely possible, but whether you achieve it, depends on your answer to that question.
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