So, they announced the winners of phase one for the weight loss competition.  Overall, while I am completely loving my overall experience with Young Living, I have been very disappointed with their weight loss competition.  Do their products work?  Yeah.  I just haven’t been a big fan of the way they chose to run this competition.  They had a very large registration window – allowing for people to enroll their starting weight a full month before the competition started.  There was no progress chart for us to see our standing.   They changed the rules mid-stream and their announcement of the winners included NO information about the winner’s progress or where we all fell on the chart in standings.  Honestly, something seems amuck and it has left me not caring about finishing their competition.  I mean – I lost like 30 pounds and 19 inches, but another person self-proclaimed they lost 7 pounds and somehow lost over 30 inches?  Maybe I don’t live in their version of reality.

That being said, I started the competition at just under 380 pounds and I am now 337.4 – so I’m still rockin’ it!  I’m proud of myself and my accomplishments.  I’m proud I walked five days a week – EVERY SINGLE WEEK – and made mostly phenomenal eating choices throughout the competition.  Could I have done better?  Sure, but everyone knows that I busted my butt to win this thing and I can’t feel bad about my progress.

I’ve wanted to post about self-sabotage for the last few weeks?  Did you see that I weigh a little more than I did when I last posted?  Yeah… I don’t know if you can call that sabotage, but I feel like it is.

The hardest thing about this long journey of weight loss is that life keeps moving.  Work still causes stress, relationship difficulties still sap all your energy and leave you too depressed to want to go to a gym… heck, even human nature itself sometimes gets in the way of “feeling” the need to get out there and pound the pavement.  For me, though, I still struggle with a spirit that is easy to break.  I’ve experienced this when I hit major milestones and I realize how very far I still have left to go.  I’ve also experienced disappointment with the numbers not moving as much as I wanted after a few days pass.  I have experienced the desire to get to a goal so bad that the stress I place on myself increases my temptation.  Most recently, though, I have noticed how much external validation plays into my weight loss journey. 

After the first phase of the competition ended and waiting period began, I watched as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into a month before the results were announced.  To be honest with you, this period of time killed me.  I wanted to know I won.  I wanted my efforts to be validated.  I wanted to feel like I had done something that made me worth it.  As this antagonizing waiting period stretched on, I found I gave into temptation so much more frequently than I ever have.  To be even more honest, this weekend I made a ton of choices that I never would have made before after I experienced the crushing and unsatisfying announcement of the results.

I expected that there would be a post showing the overall progress and, if I didn’t win, I could still show that I came in near the top.  Yet, I wasn’t given that.  I was only given a short announcement that identified the names of the winner…  I cursed out loud and immediately sought out unhealthy food and alcohol.  How could they do this?  Something feels wrong!  I feel so… cheated!  For the rest of the weekend, I continued to make unhealthy choices as I ate whatever I wanted and however much I wanted.

It was with my behaviors during the waiting period for announcements and the choices I made after the announcement, I knew I had to talk about self-sabotage.  With all the success I have been having, why would I have such a strong need to have the validation of this weight loss competition when the ultimate award for losing this weight is so much more important than prizes or prize money?  How much would you pay to be able to tie your shoes or go to the zoo and walk 7.5 miles in 3 hours and still have the energy to make it through the rest of your day?  To me, these abilities have become priceless.  So, why would I sabotage my progress over something so stupid as waiting forever for results or losing a competition?

Maybe I got so focused on the prizes that I forgot what this journey is all about?  Maybe I got so focused on overcoming that I lost sight of the fact that I am already winning?  Maybe I will  always struggle with inner voices that make me incapable of seeing my own worth?  Perhaps it is not about being perfect or being the best? Maybe I need to be okay with just being me and not being so focused on external sources for defining my self worth?  Maybe I just need to be focused on being the best version of myself that I can be and roll with both the good weeks and the bad weeks?