Sometimes when I have a day — or days — of feeling melancholy, with no drive, energy, or will power to make the right choices, I say that I am in the “black hole.”
Often there are a couple days like this every month when making the right decisions seems virtually impossible. I struggle not only with tracking my daily food intake, but also with making the right choices when it comes to food period. Days like these are also often difficult for me to find any motivation to workout. I take one look at my training schedule and feel utterly overwhelmed. The task of running a mile, let alone 5, is out of the question.
Having seen a therapist who specializes in weight loss and eating, I’ve begun to rewire my brain these last few months. She has taught me the importance of being easy on myself, and has tried to refocus my thinking on the big picture, and not those singular times where we feel defined by our failures. It’s hard though, in those moments when you feel nothing but self loathing. I’ve always believed that success is determined by the little choices and decisions we make every day. I’ve learned that some days we just make a lot of bad choices and decisions. The trick to overcoming those days, and to get out of the cycle, is to realize that, hey – it’s one day in your life, and it will not ruin you. Switching my thought process to that mentality has been difficult. I’m very hard on myself, and while that can be good in some ways, it can also be the kiss of death. Beating myself up over one bad food day can cause me to go through a cycle of several bad food days. These patterns have become less and less over the weeks…but they are still here…and I still find myself in this black hole at times.
So here I am, 7 days after returning from vacation, and I should be feeling rejuvenated and ready to tackle my training program. And yet, I don’t. It’s been a tough 7 days of trying to get back on track. Trying to make the right decisions, and forcing myself to do the things I should. I wake up in the morning before my alarm goes off, and think to myself, “okay, get up and go for a run” – but I just lay there instead and kick myself for it later. Yesterday I bought a cookie, a jumbo chocolate chip muffin and a Twix bar — after having a completely fine day of healthy eating. I only needed a little snack because I was having dinner later than usual that evening, and I’m not entirely sure why I thought all of those things would necessitate a “snack”. In the end, I had the cookie, and as I was driving, threw everything out my window (sans wrappers!) to prevent feeling like a total loser later on. Choices.
I have been struggling again today with feeling motivated to run. I need to run 5 miles today, and I forced myself to run on my lunch. I did 3.17 miles and it was kind of tough. I need to do 2 more miles later this evening, and only then will I feel like I’m really trying my best to scratch my way out of this hole.
Choices, choices, choices.
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