Push: Finding Motivation and Reclaiming Your Joy!

,Fitness is a journey not a destination! My challengers hear me say this ALL the time! It's easy to think that fit people have it all together, but fitness fluctuates as much as your meals and schedules fluctuate. Life changes, busy schedules, travel, stress and a million other things affect our routines. We constantly have to reevaluate our goals and how we are going to reach them.

The last few months have been a struggle for me. We moved across the country away from our families, which was much harder emotionally than I thought it would be. We no longer had help with our children and very few friends in the area.  I was struggling with emotional and physical fatigue and motivation was scarce. I was doing my work outs and sticking to my nutrition plan ( only because my accountability group was watching!) but I was STRUGGLING in ways I haven't struggled since before I started this lifestyle change.

Food addictions, that I thought were a thing of the past, resurfaced and I felt distracted trying to fight my cravings. It was discouraging! But I learned something new about my journey.  It's new everyday! I haven't arrived. I will always have to push myself outside my comfort zone. That's how we grow!

I had gotten complacent. I was working out everyday but really only to cross it off my list. I had lost my excitement about what I was doing. I wasn't looking for signs of growth or progress. My weight was healthy and stable, I was eating fairly well and I just got sloppy. The sloppier I was being, the less motivated I felt. I wasn't pressing for one more rep or getting uncomfortable by upping my weights. I started comparing myself to my before picture instead of trying to grow into my best self. I was settling for " good enough" and that's not very motivating! I had stalled in my fitness journey and in my life.

I needed to stop cutting corners and make my workouts count! I needed to stop checking my phone mid workout. I needed to push to do more reps than I did the day before.  I needed to change my perspective.

So, I made some changes! I started leaving my phone in another room when I was working out. I enforced it was MY time by refusing interruptions from my children ( with the exceptions of emergencies of course!) I pushed myself to do as many reps as I could and not just what was comfortable and I started tracking my food intake faithfully. It's amazing how it's either an upward or downward spiral!

Pushing myself in my workouts made me want to eat good food so that I could see the results of my efforts and, on the other hand, sticking to my meal plan made me feel excited to do my workouts! In my weaker moments, I noticed that a bad meal choice made me want to work out LESS and skipping my workout led to poor food decisions the next day. Getting in the healthy upward spiral made the lifestyle easier to maintain than it was when I was cheating and skimping!

Pushing myself outside my comfort zone and focusing on continued growth has put the joy back into the process! So, if you aren't feeling motivated, ask yourself: Am I sticking to my comfort zone?  Am I taking the easy way out? Is it time to bump up my weights? Do I still need to use the modifer? Am I tracking my containers each day? Am I recording my cheats? Am I giving into emotional eating? Am I making excuses for myself? Do I have a vision for who I want to be? Am I seeing my internal transformation as important as my external transformation?

It's when you push yourself outside your comfort zone that you see transformation inside and out! You can't be motivated in your comfort zone! Each day you have to give it your all, you have to do your BEST, you have to take the cards you got dealt that day and played the HELL out of them! That doesn't mean perfection, just that you gave it your ALL!

If you have been in a cycle of falling in and out of being motivated, losing a few pounds or building some muscle, only to lose all your progress when motivation wanes, I challenge you to join us this month! Our accountability group is going to be focusing on pushing ourselves outside our comfort zone and falling in love with living wholeheartedly in line with our goals! We will also be diving into Chalene Johnson's 30 Push!
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If you claim your spot by tomorrow, I am going to send you the book as a gift, because I want you to be on FIRE with motivation! I want this to be the last time you start over! Even through this season of struggle, I never gave up! I figured it out, I kept pressing forward and I learned more about myself and fell back in love with the process! You can too! Join us! 

http://www.angelsofvalor.com/join-a-challenge-group.html