Same Race, Different Pace

Hey everybody, Ryan here!

I generally defer to Rachel when it comes to this kind of thing, but I’ve been working to step out of my comfort zone, so here goes.

As most of you know, last year Rachel and I decided that it was time to get going on these fitness goals that we have had for a handful of years. As most do we started off strong, we looked into how we could change our diet, we took measurements, we weighed in the same day every week, we looked into and critiqued workout plans to figure out what would work best for our respective goals.

At about the 2-3 month mark of our journey, Rachel had made pretty decent strides. I on the other hand had sort of stagnated and plateaued pretty hard. It seemed that as she was plowing through her journey, I was trudging through mine. Like we were running the same race, put at a different pace.

I honestly shut down a little bit because I wasn’t getting my desired results. I told myself “I’ll just try to maintain and eat better, I have a pretty labor intensive job and the calories will take care of themselves,” an easy thing to say in the summer time when I would come home soaked from the sweat on my shirt. This mentality later turned into “I just need something in my guts to get through the day” and then, the fitness roadblock that is the holidays came upon us, giving me another excuse to go through the motions. “I’ll get back on the horse after the holidays, for realsies this time” I said to myself, yet again making excuses as to why i was falling behind my wife, now proverbial miles ahead of me. I admittedly did not feel as though it was much of a team effort at this point.

The fact of the matter is, I let myself get jealous of Rachel’s success. I never let it stop me from motivating her and cheering her on, but I would be lying to say that I wasn’t envious. People would say congratulatory words to her… only her, which only fed into how far behind I had become and drove more into a seemingly toxic mindset of “Well, if I’m not getting credit for my effort, then I’m just not going to even try.” Not good for someone trying to get healthy and kick bad habits to the curb.

“But Ryan, how did you get re-motivated? I just saw you post about it!”

An excellent question! The answer however, is not terribly eloquent.

I did a motivational gut check, and accepted that the only person who had control over my pace in this marathon of wellness, was me. Rachel challenged me to look at it like a race or a marathon, (hence the recurring metaphor) “You don’t have to get there fast, just getting there is more important right?” This resonated in a way I hadn’t thought about before, it made me look at each day I went to the gym and each time I went with a salad over a cheeseburger seem more like small victories, than just what needed to be done.

So, to answer the question more directly, I owned what my journey had become. I took ownership of my excuses and lies I told myself. I didn’t put in 100% and did indeed get out what I put in… which was lackluster to say the least.

In 2019, I am making the conscious effort to keep the mindset Rachel shared with me, to treat it like a marathon instead of a sprint, to not try to finish first, just finish at all. Plateaus are going to happen, when they do just keep in mind that progress is progress no matter how small.

Thank you for bearing with me as I shared some of the Phig side of our journey, I will certainly be updating you as the year progresses.

Until next time,

Ryan