Day 365

Here we are, one year later.

My friends, it has been an adventure!

If you'll remember, I started this year with a list of goals. To be completely honest with you, I didn't hit any of them. I didn't lose 104 pounds, expand my business network with 2 new business contacts every day, or sell any blankets. What did I do? 

I shed 80 pounds, the first step in getting my health into alignment so I can move forward and enjoy my life to its fullest potential. I also made a commitment to be more myself, and to be more open with people. These two decisions have led to other decisions and my life has changed so dramatically!  

Even at the point of desperation I'd hit when I made the decision to start this journey, I was being dishonest. I couldn't allow myself to be open about the way that I was struggling, so I lied. I sugar coated my progress and said that I was feeling better about myself when really the daily fight against my growing sense of worthlessness was becoming steadily more difficult to win. I distracted myself from the issues I was facing by imagining that I was making forward progress as I saw my weight continue to climb. I accepted my husband's placation and convinced myself that I was doing better than I actually was. When I did finally realize that I had failed on my journey, I fudged the lines of truth to save face. Despite having gained 60 pounds and three dress sizes, as well as increasing my blood pressure and experiencing a host of other symptoms that pointed to poor physical and mental health, I stubbornly continued on my path of destruction all the while whistling merrily and encouraging others to follow me. 

I am so glad no one did!

In January I finally decided to enlist some help and I updated my goals; but I chose to listen to someone who was not an expert, was not trained properly, and was not capable of actually helping me. Her advice led to my injury, and I lost hope. 

Hope is a terrible thing to lose. I couldn't even maintain the lie and illusion of positive progress anymore, and I sank into a deep depression. I hid from everyone, started lashing out at my husband, and constantly berated myself for my failure. My dreams were crushed, and my heart grew bitter. Even though this time in my life is now far behind me, it still brings tears to my eyes and heaviness to my heart when I think about it. 

I spent almost six months lying to you, my friends, and I pointed you in the wrong direction. For that I am deeply sorry. 

Here's where the story changes. Have I mentioned yet how incredibly blessed I am to be married to Jared? He would not allow me to wallow in the pit I threw myself into. Within two days of injuring myself and abandoning hope, he found a new solution. A real solution. Despite my arguments, misgivings, and temper tantrums, Jared started us on the path to true health by finding the information we'd been missing. After two weeks of trying to persuade me to use the information, Jared put his foot down. He gave me no choice. "You will do this." No 'or else' and no door number two. I grudgingly spent a month studying and immediately applying the science of physical health, and I saw results. They were small results. I wasn't sure that they would last. But those small results reignited my hope. 

By March that flickering candle of hope had grown into a blazing fire. My results were still small and not very evident, even my husband wasn't sure if he could honestly see a difference. He understood that saying there was change to make me feel better, without seeing actual change would only encourage me to begin lying to myself again.He withheld his praise for my progress. But I was learning so much, and every new bit that I learned and applied created more momentum. Fueled by hope I realized that I could not maintain any sort of positive change physically if I was constantly abusing myself mentally, and I reached out to God for help in breaking the cycle of negativity and depression in my mind. 

In May the physical results were tangible and undeniable to me, but the mental results were still limping along. Every morning was still a battle against the monster of self-depreciation inside my head. Every day was still a constant struggle to stay patient and kind and calm. Yet, I was winning more often than not. My physical progress gave me hope that God could then use to fuel more mental progress. I finally felt secure enough to admit that I had been wrong, but I didn't feel like I had any room to talk about the right way. 

May was a month of huge growth for me personally, and in June my personality really started bursting forward. I finally let go of the idea that I was not qualified to share what I'd learned and decided to start helping people. It's been really cool to help others succeed, one small victory at a time. It's been amazing to learn what I'm capable of and to push myself and my own limits. 

Now we're here. 

It's been one year since I stared down the girl in the mirror and decided that something needed to change. One year since I started focusing on becoming happier and healthier. Let me tell you, it's been an amazing year. Did I reach my stated goals? No. Not even close in some cases. Am I happier and healthier now than I was this time last year? Oh yes! 

Am I stopping here?

I thought about this one for a long time. It seems like there's an obvious answer here, but I didn't want to rush into anything emotionally. At first I thought that I would shut down this blog, focus on my teaching and encouragement blog, and let this one year challenge fade into the background until it was forgotten altogether. After all, I failed.

This past weekend I attended an amazing business conference in Portland, Oregon. I heard a lot of different leaders speak about their struggles, about their victories, and about their hope for the future. I heard the same principles I've been hearing for many years at these conferences, but this time one in particular stood out differently to me. Maybe you've heard of failing forward? It's the idea that even if you fall, you're still closer to your goal because you're learning from your failure. It's a concept I've heard about over and over again. In fact, my business mentor has even told me personally that I needed to learn to accept failure as part of the process and learn to fail forward instead of always beating myself up for my mistakes!

For some reason, at this conference, the idea of failing forward stood out to me more than usual and I decided that when it came to this blog and the journey that accompanies it, failing forward is exactly what I had to do. 

I missed my goal. But I'm so much closer to being my best self than I was a year ago. I've come so far! Tomorrow starts another one-year journey in which I'll be working to constantly improve myself in a few key areas, and I'd sure love it if you'd join me. It's going to be such an adventure. 

Day 364

Closing out week three and starting up week four in my marathon training, I'm feeling pretty awesome. My energy has continued to stay up and I'm becoming something of a morning person now that I'm sleeping well. Last week I finally hit a goal that I've had for a while: getting four miles into an hour! That's an especially cool victory for me because my ankle was slightly out of place that day (I pushed myself too hard the day before and then slept in a weird angle). I felt like I was going to much slower because of my ankle, but at the end of the walk I discovered that we'd actually gone a bit faster than usual! I think the regular warm-ups are contributing to that a lot. Once my muscles are used to the idea that it's time to do something, they're pretty eager to cooperate.

Over the past three weeks I've been incredibly blessed to have my training partner with me. She has knowledge where I lack it, is compassionate and ready to work with me while also pushing me to improve, and she has become a dear friend of mine in this short time. Sometimes God just brings the right people into your life and she has definitely stepped up to fill in a gap in my life.

Other than that it's been a somewhat uneventful week. Training went well, I reached a new goal, and that's awesome!

This week, I'm going to be focusing more on going as far as possible in the same amount of time. I'm excited to see how far and how fast I can go before I start jogging.

Day 356

Good morning!

Today is the end of week 2 (and beginning of week 3) of my training program to be ready for the half marathon in June. I'm feeling pretty great! Even when I don't get the right amount of sleep, I have plenty of energy!

In week one my average speed/distance was 2.2 miles in 42 minutes. In week two I beat that! The average for week two was 2.75 miles in 47 minutes!

Averages are affected by my endurance training though, which is when I walk a longer distance in preparation for the next week's increase in miles. What I like better is that last Sunday I walked as fast as I could and my rate was 2.32 in 42 minutes, but this Sunday I walked 2.74 miles in 43 minutes!!

As my friend Victoria says, Do The Dance!

This week, I'm getting my walking up to 3 miles every day and at the end of the week my distance training will be 6 miles long. We're also adding some warm-up/cardio activity and stretching prior to the walk, to potentially increase our overall speed. I'm excited!

Day 349

Did I mention I'm training for a (half) marathon? I'm sure I did. I'm really excited about it!

Today was the end of my first week of training. I feel great! I've taken it a little slow, don't want to overdo it in my first week and have to stop. But I feel good. I've got a friend who's walking with me for my training and I'm really excited about having someone who's willing to be up at 6am with me every morning! It's helping me stay motivated, and we always have great conversations.

I started this week with big ambitions for the rest of my training. Maybe a little too big. my year-long training plan had me scheduled to be running 13 miles every day from October through June. In my excitement and - I admit - lack of knowledge, I thought this was a good idea. It would help me make sure that I could actually run the 13 miles when the time came. If I was running 13 miles every day anyway, the half marathon would be no problem!

Okay, so I was a little carried away by my excitement for this goal.

Over the course of the week I've been continuing my research and refining the training schedule. I've come to the realization that 13 miles is a half marathon - and something people only do about once a quarter - for a reason. It's a lot of miles! To do that every day would A) take a while, B) increase my chances of hurting myself or burning out, and C) make finishing the half marathon less of a victory.

For those reasons, and mostly because it was a bad idea bred from overzealousness in the first place, I've altered my training plan. A part of me is sad about not following my original plan, but a bigger part of me is excited to have a refined plan that's going to work better for me long term.

It's HappyHealthy day 349, and training day 7, and it's going to be a super awesome day.