New Challenges

Well fellow, past and future 6FITTERS - I've not been able to stick to my goals or healthy habits this last week.  I'm out of town and staying with family and have had 2 holiday celebrations in the 5 days I've been here!  During the last round of 6FIT, I took the same trip for the same amount of time but it was just Connor and I.  I was able to fit all my workouts in, manage what I ate more and feel better about the choices I made.  This time around has been more like a "vacation" in the sense that Ned is here with us, we camped with the whole family the first night we were here, we celebrated my brother in law's birthday yesterday and then celebrated Easter today.  As a guest at all of these meals I'm having a hard time saying "no" to non hunt.gather.grow foods.  And I do realize that we are all eating extra special foods as part of the celebrations, which reminds me that this is one of those 20% of the times that we break the rules to enjoy life.  The first few days I agonized over which parts of the meal I would try to avoid and how I would say "no thanks" when offered certain foods.  This is NOT how I want to live!  These are not patterns I want to create, as they conjure emotions of guilt and frustration.
Last night all of this sort of came to a head as I decided to take my SECOND immunity day.  In two weeks, I've already used up both my immunity days!  I felt really bad actually, like I was letting myself and my team down.  During the hardest (in my opinion) challenge of the program I took 2 days of immunity.  As I sort of talked my way through this, I decided I could: a) continue to feel bad, guilty, whatever or b) revise my goals, revamp my attitude and get on with it!  I chose to do the latter, and made 2 new goals for today (sugar free Sunday, also Easter).  1: I would not eat coffee cake from my favorite bakery that was offered during brunch.  SUCCESS! 2.  I would not eat ANY Easter candy.  SUCCESS!  And then after a quiet family dinner my father in law surprised us with gelato, and I enjoyed some with everyone else.  Because to me, it was a good choice to skip the coffee cake in the brunch buffet and instead load up on deliciously ripe, fresh fruits and it was a good choice to keep my hands out of the kids Easter candy.  But to pass on dessert during an intimate family dinner with fun conversation going would have made my father in law feel bad because he surprised us with our favorite treat.  Those are the decisions that are going to be different for each and every person.  It's not fair for me to think that because someone on my team can eat vegan throughout an entire week that at the drop of a hat I should be able to do that, too.  Or that because someone else who has a baby can workout every morning before the child wakes up that I should too.  That works for them, but not necessarily for me.  And that is O.K. 
Sometimes I am too critical of myself in being part of a team.  Sometimes I make goals that are too far fetched.  I need to work on this.  I need to be realistic with myself, my goals and my lifestyle.  Since this is my third round of 6FIT, I need to think about my personal goals some more and figure out how best to achieve them.  In previous rounds, my goal was to lose weight and gain muscle.  I was successful with this and now I am working on maintaining my body and making permanent healthy choices.  This is much, much harder than I imagined!  Before if I indulged in ice cream, I would add 30 min of cardio to the next day's workout to work off the calories.  And while I can still do that today, it gets a little frantic as I am taking on more responsibilities in other areas of my life (groups, church, friendships, etc).  I am seeking a better routine which involves taking / teaching my classes each week and eating healthy.  It sounds so simple and it just baffles me that I struggle so much with changing my old habits!  I just need to make smaller changes so that I can build on the little successes and move on to bigger changes.
If you've made it to the end, thank you for reading through my thoughts : )  I'm sure it is a little discombobulated at times, but it's the truth.  It's been a hard week in ways I haven't experienced before, so it's back to the drawing board of goals for me!  Tomorrow I will make a personal goal for myself for the next week, and I won't make it a challenging one.  I need a little success to boost esteem as we head to the half way mark!
I'll leave you with one of my favorite thoughts: "It's not always about what happens, but more about how you handle it and move forward from it".

Happy Sunday everyone :)