It's all uphill from here baby

Yeah, you read that right, it's all uphill. Weight loss is an uphill trek, and it's not one of those tiny fake hills, its pretty much a 90 degree angle straight up.

I go on these bike rides 2-3 times a week, and the bike path is quite hilly, but there is this one hill that I like to call the hill from hell. Seriously, I have to gear down to my lowest gear and then peddle up at a snails pace to get up the stupid thing. On my way up I curse the obvious extreme biker who thought this would be the perfect place to put the path.

So I am peddling uphill this morning, sweating and swearing. And this is when the analogy hit me. This is how weight loss is. It feels hard and frustrating, you may cursing every cupcake you ever ate, or cursing the fact that cupcakes aren't calories free. You get sweaty, you feel worn out, and you want to quit half way up. But this hill is your only path home, it's uphill or nothing. Now imagine that you get halfway up this enormous hill and you have worked your butt off just to get this far, and you make the conscious decision to coast backwards down the hill.

I know what you are thinking, "why the heck would I do that!? It took me forever just to get here, attempting that again might just kill me." Only a dummy would go backwards right? Except we do this all the time. I have done it several times.

We start our trek up the hill to reach our weight loss goals, and we have the very best intentions of making it to the top, but somewhere along the way we make the choice to go back down, sometimes it's a slow coast, and sometimes it's a full on race to the bottom. Going down is certainly faster, it takes a week to pack on 10 lbs and 5 weeks to loose it. That's the sad truth.

So why are we doing it? Why are we choosing to undo all the work we did, all the effort we put in? Why don't we just keep going? The simple truth, it's hard, it's long, and it seems like we may never reach the top. It's a struggle.

I am nearing the end of week one and I can think of at least 3 times that I felt like giving in. What would a cupcake hurt? What harm could one donut do? Are french fries really that bad?  But I am making progress, I have lost 3 lbs! That progress is keeping me from giving up.

So when you get going up the hill instead of looking up at how far you have to go, look back at how far you have come, and keep going. If you need to stop for a rest do it. Sometimes we all need a break. But by break I don't mean pull into the nearest McDonalds drive through. I mean if you have been aiming for 2 lbs of weight loss a week, maybe scale back to 1 lbs a week, for a day or two, or even the whole diet. Scale back on your workouts a little. You don't have to race up the hill, it's a marathon remember, not a sprint. Go at a pace that works for you, anything it takes not to turn back.

When I get going up the hill I think of one of two things, the little engine that could "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I know I can" or Dory from Finding Nemo "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, what do we do we swim.."

Keep swimming, because I know you can, I know you can!