Skip to main content

Progress, Not Perfection

Throughout my weightloss and wellness journey, and especially after discovering Intermittent Fasting, my go-to phrase has become, "I am human."

 It's something that's said a LOT in my IF groups.

 We spend our lives seeing other's highlight reels and it's hard to remember that EVERYONE is going through their own struggles.

 "I am human," is a mantra that I've adopted to remind myself that no one is perfect, least of all me, and that's ok!

 We weren't meant to be perfect.

 I forget friend's birthdays or anniversaries...

 I have days where my diet is less than balanced...

 I have sleepless nights where my brain won't turn off and I'm consumed with the stress of adulthood...

 I have days where I don't check everything off my to-do list...

 I have days where I'm exhausted, sick, overwhelmed or anxious.

 For me, yesterday was definitely a human day.

 I'm not sure exactly what happened.

 I woke up early and felt great, but as I went through my typical routine, I started getting a terrible headache.

 Now, headaches are nothing new for me. I've suffered from them every day since I was in sixth grade. Headaches are not a big deal.

 Plus, I had things to do!! Emails, phone calls, laundry and dishes...

 I kept plugging away and the headache kept getting worse.

 Maybe it was from my hair being up for too long, since I like to wear it that way while I'm working..

 So, I took my hair down, but the pain grew.

 Then I thought maybe it was a hunger headache from fasting. They don't happen often, but occasionally they do.

 The last thing I wanted was to break my fast early after not fasting this past weekend, but the headache was getting worse and I couldn't just ignore it any longer.

 My body was trying to tell me something. It needed something I was not giving it.

 I broke my fast early, got myself some food. The headache remained.

 Okay, fine. I took pain relievers and decided to just sit and rest for a while.

 The headache was threatening to turn into a migraine and now my stomach was acting up.

 What in the world was happening??

 I ate a little something more, worse. I had some tea, worse. I took more pain relievers...you get the idea.

 I was trying to listen to my body, but everything I tried was making it worse and I was running out of ideas.

 That's when the lightbulb went off. The one thing I had been depriving my body of for almost a week...actual sleep!

 With stress and travel and spending time with family and friends, I had definitely been short-changing myself in the sleep department.

 So, I just went to bed.

 And guess what, today I woke up feeling so much better...shocker right?

 Past me, perfectionist me, would've ignored my body and kept going. I probably would've woken up today feeling worse...

 I'm taking yesterday as a reminder that I am not Superwoman. I am not infallible. I have needs. I will have more bad days in the future. I am only human.

 My journey isn't just about weight loss, it's about learning to take care of myself...and it's a constant work in progress.

Progress, not perfection. That's the goal...even if I need a good reminder from time to time.

 We are human,

 Carly









Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for your comment on Busy Women's Health

Popular posts from this blog

National Coffee Day!!

Something you should know about me, I LOVE my coffee. It gets me going every morning and gives me a pick-me-up when I really need a push to get through the day and I seriously don't function well without it.  So much so, it's kind of become a running joke with my family and friends. In fact,  my best friend, Miss Courtney , would greet me at the door in silence with a cup of coffee if I'd been up late the night before. She gets me. I'm drinking some now as I type this. When I started Intermittent Fasting, I was relieved to find that I didn't have to give up my coffee. I just had to switch to unsweetened and black, which wasn't too big of a deal, because I had completed a sugar detox a couple years before discovering IF. Through the detox, I became somewhat taste-sensitive to sugar where, depending on the food item, a little was almost too much for me anymore. As a result, my coffee was mainly just a little bit of cream anyway. It makes
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid-19: A Message From A Front Line Health Care Worker

Hello friends, I hope this message finds you well.  Through out the recent weeks, and the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic, I have been struggling on what to say.  I have been trying to keep a positive outlook, telling myself that we'll be okay. That everything will go back to normal eventually, but as we've seen, so much changes from day to day that it's hard to know what the future holds right now. It's scary. It can be overwhelming. We've never seen anything like this. Some of us are in major hotspots and some, thankfully, are in more sheltered pockets. The reality of the situation is that we are all affected. I am writing this from my home office, a place that I have spent much much more time in recently, especially in the wake of the governor of Colorado, Jared Polis' stay-at-home orders. Being that I am a member of the media, I have been deemed "essential." Like many of us, I have special documentation from Washington, D.C. that
22 comments
Read more

Getting Mono Meant No Caffeine Ever!

Caffeine, one word, so many meanings. Coffee, soda, tea, energy drinks, one shots, chocolate...caffeine is everywhere.  While this is a great blessing for most people, for a few of us out there it's terrible.  Especially when it's suddenly just taken away.   Welcome to my world when I was just past 18 and getting ready for freshman year of college. A little back story.  We moved from Indiana to Kansas the summer before my senior year was to start.  So, as if the life of a teenager isn't already "hard" enough, add in all new everything before what is supposed to be the best year of school ever.  You guessed it, I hated everything and everyone at this point.  Not even a month in and my appendix ruptures. I spent over a week, up to the Fourth of July, in the hospital.  Summer really was awful by that point.   First day of school, sent to principal’s office for wearing a spaghetti strap tank top and had to wear a very large ugly school mascot shirt over it. 
1 comment
Read more