Decided to try **Patience** for a change...

[gettinhams]

Time to be honest. I have a history of "on & off" exercising (and health and nutrition, etc.).

My pattern is to grit my teeth and overdo it for a few weeks, and then burn out. After I burn out, I get sedentary and depressed and I overeat. After enough misery (weeks--months) I start making a plan to get "back on track". I figure out a new way to overdo it for a few weeks, (wanting amazing results really quickly--set up for *failure! hello!*--) and usually I overdo even that. It's not even just the physical overdoing. It's the planning, the research, the obsessing, the total out-of-balance. It all wears me out, and I crash and burn. (and I'm a mom, for heaven's sake--there's no TIME to overdo and crash and burn!!)

So I did it again a few weeks ago. In late November I signed up at a gym, and I started tracking my nutrition.

The food tracking worked really well for me--I was able to reduce my calories to a goal number for the day--I kept this up for about 6 weeks. I ate really quality foods to get the most nutritional "bang for my buck"...I planned meals ahead, blah blah blah.

At the gym, I did HIIT (well, a wimpy version of HIIT) on three different cardio machines, for about 50-60 minutes a day, 4-5 days a week. Then, in the week before I HURT myself, I started lifting some weights. I worked way too many exercises for the same little body parts, and I lifted too heavy too soon. Tweaked a neck muscle, took a week or two off from the gym--and kinda binged on food, some healthy, some not so much.

BUT, now I'm back.

I read a *sticky* at these forums, which advised beginners not to design their own training routines. The author identified common mistakes that beginners make, and hey! They were my mistakes. So I did some searching to see which books or routines were recommended for beginners, and I've settled on "Sculpting Her Body Perfect." I've decided to just *do what the man says.*

This morning I completed one of the sample "body conditioning" routines from the book. One exercise per muscle group, 15-20 reps, about 75% of max intensity.

I felt like I wasn't doing enough! My brain really, really, really, wanted me to do a lot more (and then burn out).

But given my history of false starts, I've chosen not to trust my brain so much.

I've decided to PATIENTLY go at the pace of "Sculpting Her Body Perfect"...pursue consistency...reasonableness...working hard but not so much I fry...good eating...and just wait...not expect to transform my body in six weeks!

It's a paradigm shift for me, and not easy.

Patting myself on the back: After my last little burnout, it took me less than two weeks to regroup and get back in the game!!! Proud of myself!

[butterfly83]

Good on you girl!!) Thats a big problem with us women! We're just too hard on ourselves and expect perfection. If we slip up just once on our plan, then we just beat ourselves up for not being stronger- when we should be congratulating ourselves on staying on track for so long! then just get back into it! That's the thing with living a healthy lifestyle- it is in actual fact a LIFE STYLE- so in order for it to see us through in future years, it HAS to be reasonable and realistic to be successful. Setting smaller more obtainable goals and then progressing from each of those- not just "in 6 weeks im gunna look like monica brant!"
No. 1 is CONSISTENCY- consistency in our eating, exercise and most importantly our thinking. It's all about mindset. Results come from consistency.

[gettinhams]

Thanks, Butterfly!