I'm Luvin' It?

I am sitting here in the parking lot of a McDonald's and observing the lunch hour. It started about 11 o'clock and now at about 1:45, for almost 2 hours there has been a line of cars unceasing all the way our of the parking lot to go through the drive through. Sitting here, I get really riled up observing the never ending line of people eating processed fast food for lunch. P.s. McDonald's actually happens to have really good Internet with all my travels over the past year, I have discovered that McDonald's has fantastic wireless Internet so a lot of times I end up sitting in a McDonald's parking lot connected to the Internet so which is what I'm doing right now. So here's the deal guys, if it's too easy then you will fail.  This is too easy. These people sitting here getting the McDonald's. This is too easy. It's the easiest choice. It's the quickest choice. It's the compromise. Every single person in this line knows they should not be here. They would all say ,“Yes, I know I really should not eat McDonalds, but….” and then there is about 900 excuses they could provide to justify eating at McDonalds today.  

It is when you continue to compromise your health and fitness and never get to a point to make yourself a priority, then there is always going to be excuses and reasons to not work on yourself.  You will always fail. When you continue to leave room for excuses, you will always fail.  Everyone in this drive through line has an excuse for being here. Everyone in this line knows that they shouldn't be eating fast food. That this is not the optimal healthy choice for them and their life. And everyone here has a reason for ignoring the knowledge of what is better for them. As soon as we leave room for that in our lives, the compromise, we can allow for failure. We are making it OK for ourselves to fail at some point.

What I would love for each and every person who I work with as a trainer is she get to a point mentally where that is no longer OK. That I would rather starve to death than eat at McDonalds.  That's where I strive to get my clients.  That they say, “I would rather go hungry. If this were the last thing the on the planet to eat,  I would not eat it.” To get to a place where there is no room for compromise anymore. That is empowering!  When you look and you say, “I wouldn't eat this shit if you gave me a million dollars”.  Maybe it's taken you 30 years, 40 years to get here, but that is empowering when you get there. When you get to the no compromise mindset, you have the confidence that you are not going to fail.  It might be a long journey to get to where you need to be because of the damage has been done over time. But it's so freeing when you get to that mind set.

To know for sure without a doubt that no matter what, I would never be found in a McDonalds drive through line.  Because that is a compromise and I'm not compromising on my health and fitness anymore. Because when I did that before when I was compromising, I felt like shit all the time. I was always struggling with my weight. I was always suffering.  The headaches, the migraines, the acne, the stomach pains, the chronic constipation, all the stuff I was taking multiple medications for.  That was my compromise.

Compromise that seeps into every area of your life. When we compromise taking care of us, then we're going to compromise taking care of us in every area of our life not just health and fitness. There is so much movement right now to “love yourself”. To accept yourself. But, if you're using that “self acceptance and self love” as an excuse to not be healthy physically, mentally, and biologically, then you've got us take a step back and ask “How is that loving myself?” That's not.  Being obese is not loving yourself. Being a smoker is not loving yourself. Eating fast food is not loving yourself. It's not loving yourself when you go through a McDonald's drive-through. I don't care how you freaking twist it in your mind that's not loving yourself.  One of my favorite phrases that I picked up along the way is “Eat like you love yourself.”  PROVE IT.  If you're doing destructive things to your body and your health, you don't love yourself.  In psychology this is called incongruence.  You say you love yourself.  You say that you wanna be a healthy person. But your behaviors are saying otherwise.  

When I work with my Fire Team Whiskey clients I call part of my job sniping. You commit to this program, you say you want to get healthy, fit, lose weight, etc by signing up to work with me. But as we get started, your behaviors say otherwise. You are not following the nutrition plan. You are using excuses to not follow it. “I don’t cook.” “I didn’t have time.” “I was hungry and I didn’t bring anything with me to eat.” You say you want to lose weight. I don't believe you! I think you're full of shit!  We can shout as loud as possible,  “I want to change!” but if you are not willing to translate that voice to behavior, stop the compromising and to stop with the excuses, then you fail.  That's a very, very, hard leap to make. That's a huge leap to make to go from saying to doing. You can’t just do that overnight. Sometimes it takes an emergency situation to scare you into making that happen. Billy Capps, one of our FTW had not 1, not 2, but 3 heart attacks before it finally hit him, “Hey, I got to do something about this!” I don't want anybody to get to that place. I don't want anybody to get to the place where I was. Where I was on 7 different medications, a fairly young person and continuing to get sicker and sicker and sicker. That was my bottom line. I was just tired of being sick and tired taking all those pills feeling like crap every day and only getting worse. It's unfortunate because a lot of people have to get to that place. A heart attack. A diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. An inability to walk up a flight of stairs without getting lightheaded and out of breath.  I just want to encourage you guys if you're in a place where you've made excuses, and yes they are excuses to stop saying are not excuses, we all make them, myself included, and be real with yourself and say, “Man I have been compromising. I have been putting convenience ahead of taking care of me.”  

When you put convenience as a priority, then you're gonna be OK with compromising and every area of your life. Convenience and compromise seeps into everything you do. Your parenting, your work, your school, your hobbies. It's a slippery slope.  Especially as women, we are the worst at this. We are always wanting to put everything else before taking care of ourselves and we know the dangers of that because when you don't take yourself how the hell are you going to be in any kind of shape to take care of somebody else. But we continue to compromise. As I continue to watch the McDonalds line go by 2 hours later, those are just the thoughts in my head. I get angry. I get really frustrated that that I can't help everyone. I can only help the people that are ready to change because of your not in a place of change, you are not going to do anything else. Sometimes we have people join our program that are not ready for change yet and it's disappointing to me because the could get such wonderful results! But there is nothing I can do but to point out the incongruence. You signed up, you said you want to change, but your behavior speaks otherwise. You are not mentally there yet. You have to get to a place of no compromise. You have to love yourself enough to take the harder road and stop compromising because of comfort and convenience.

One technique that I use is when someone is in a place of change, or if you were at some point in the past, write a letter to our future (or current self). Write a letter talking about all the things that you've noticed that have improved in your life because you stopped compromising.  All the changes that you've made, all the things that you're so proud of that you haven't you're not compromising anymore. Write yourself that letter, seal it up, and put it away where you know where it is.  If you start to find yourself falling off the wagon, making excuses, compromising, go read that letter. Hopefully you will be reminded about how the harder road was worth the effort, and maybe you will get out of the fast food line of compromise, and start doing some hard work.