Friday, January 04, 2008

Friday Quote Day

"Hard work often leads to success.
No work seldom does."


~ Harvey Mackay


Well, duh.

The key word in the first sentence is "often." Also? It helps to define success.

As both all of you long-time readers know, I've given this diet-and-exercise thing my all [not all the time, of course – I'm Not Perfect], and have experienced varying degrees of 'success,' if you define 'success' as fitting my ass into smaller jeans.

But giving it one's all is tiring and boring and frustrating when one's ass stays the same for weeks – nay, months! – on end. Staying the same despite great effort and diligence leads to carb fests and snacking and sloth, oh my.

And so I must learn to define success as something more like 'feeling good about accomplishing my daily goals.' Did I drink the water my body needs to stay hydrated and turn my pee straw-colored? Did I forego the evening snacks? Did I plan my meals, and eat what I planned to eat? Did I get some exercise? Did I write down what I ate? Etc., etc., etc.

Well, so far so good. Today is Day Three, and I'm still on plan with the exception of the evening snack. Last night was hummus and fresh vegetables – it could have been much, much worse, had Mr. Shrinking Knitter requested crack popcorn, because I canNOT turn down crack popcorn. To my credit, I decided to put myself to bed rather than eat an entire container of hummus. Sometimes drastic measures are called for.

I don't feel deprived, nor do I feel like following this healthful plan is any great burden.

But ask me again in a month or so, when my jeans are the same size as they are today.

Thanks for checking out my Project 365 blog. I had to kind of scramble to find something yesterday. And, of course, after I took the photo I realized I could have rearranged the elements to work better. That's one purpose of the project, to make you think before you shoot. Then again, I think shooting something as is might also be part of the procedure.

At any rate, I'm looking at my little world with new eyes, and while that's not so great when one is driving, it's making hanging around the shanty a lot more interesting.

2 comments:

Crabby McSlacker said...

I'm totally on board with your idea to move away from defining success as "fitting our asses into smaller jeans".

If you're eating healthy and exercising vigorously, which you obviously are, then that's success! There are too many variations in individual metabolisms to drive ourselves crazy trying to achieve what may well be impractical or impossible.

Great post!

Laura N said...

Great perspective, Debbi. I'm proud of you for finding it in yourself to define success in new ways.

Your picture project is cool!