“Live like no one else so later, you can live like no one else”
I saw this quote a few years ago from Dave Ramsey & it really stood out to me. It’s ringing loud & clear right now as I peel myself out of bed to get in a quick cardio session before I head into work today. No show on the horizon. Coming off of 23 wks of pure dedication. I’m tired. I’ve battled with myself back & forth on “reverse dieting”, what to say no to & what to “enjoy” without guilt. The transition post show is NO JOKE! Even for me, who I consider very knowledgeable about the topic…I’m still human. That in itself might be the hardest part– I know too much. Whenever I’m sorting through thoughts I tend to make two columns (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively). My two columns are “positive” & “negative”. Then, I just go down the list jotting down my thoughts in each column. Today, this quote encouraged me to just keep keeping on!
A few years ago, in an effort to be better stewards of our belongings, Mitchell & I were digging deep into money management tools, investments, etc. We hired a financial advisor & began to make the appropriate changes in order to move in the direction of our goals. If I’m being totally honest & candid, this was proving to be incredibly difficult. We work hard. We were so used to making different decisions with our income that we quickly realized we couldn’t do it all. We had to make a choice. In order to reach savings goals, pay off our student & car loans we needed to make some different choices about where to use our income. The cool thing about money is that it’s tangible. If you spend it you can usually see where it went. So, this was encouraging. Debts were decreasing & despite having to sacrifice going out to eat, going shopping or buying misc things here & there we were realizing that in order to accomplish goals sacrifice is often required.
Which brings me to this whole topic of fitness goals. Our society doesn’t have trouble losing weight. The problem lies in keeping it off. Think about it, how often are you working towards a goal & you say to yourself “only ____ more weeks” or “only ____ more pounds”. Then what? What happens when you reach your goal? You definitely can’t just go back to doing whatever you were doing before & expect to maintain what you achieved. Sound familiar?
Contest prep is a different beast, so, don’t think I’m trying to imply someone should maintain that low BF year round, haha. This just came to my mind since coming out of contest prep can spur some crazy thoughts about wanting to be “normal”.
Normal will be different for everyone. My normal now looks totally different than it did a few years ago. What I’m willing to sacrifice in order to maintain what I’ve achieved has changed. Isn’t it the same with your finances? Once you work your tail off to get out of debt can you go back to living like what got you into debt in the first place? (Think in terms of CC debt more so than student loans). No matter what, your lifestyle has to change. Sacrifices have to be made.
So, next time you try to reason with yourself when you want to do things like “normal people” evaluate your goals. What you achieve is just the sum of your choices. Again, this will look different for everyone, but for those of us with extraordinary goals…our life choices should be anything but ordinary.
