“Then It All Slipped Away!”

I see it all the time, on the message boards, forums and guestbooks, the same sad and powerless statement:  Here’s one off the guestbook on 7-15. “I had great results. Then, I let it all slip away, and five years later I weigh more than ever.” You can just feel the sadness and desperation in those statements, can’t you?

The question I wish to pose to all of today is WHY? I don’t mean “why we got fat again” because that is simply a principle of basic nutrition. Too much food! The why I am talking about is why did we choose to lose the focus we had, give up the gift of fitness we were given, and basically trade it all in for a few hours of enjoyment followed by powerlessness.

I’ve asked every one of these people who post like I mentioned above, and I get responses from maybe 10% of them who leave a contact email address. Not one of those 10% out of the years I’ve been asking has really hit the nail on the head yet. Every one of them, even though they were able to articulate a particular challenge that came along in their life, failed to answer the really penetrating question of why they allowed what happened to them to set their life spinning out of control again.

My best guess is that this failure is due to a confluence of two problems: One, a failure to appreciate the importance of continuing focus on controlling one’s thought life; and; Two, a failure to appreciate the necessity of staying focused on doing good things for ones self. Uncontrolled thought life always leads to negative thinking, of a destructive nature–always!

I say this because in every case where the “perceived reason” for the failure to stay fit was due to a family or personal tragedy, the person mentioned “losing focus” or trying to “work on what was really important.” In most cases, though, there was plenty of time to do both, but the person traded in his workout times for more time to worry or ruminate over the misfortune.

There’s something inside us that makes us want to co-suffer with the victim of a tragedy. That often takes the form of self-sacrifice such as letting ourselves go,or ceasing all other normal life contacts as the problem unfolds.

Denise Taylor, during the time that her daughter Jonnae was at her sickest, continued to keep herself fit. She did it in a focused and unselfish way. She exercised when the doctors were not around and Jonnae was resting. That activity allowed Denise to be strong, to be fully involved in the care and loving of her beautiful daughter,and to be available and strong for the rest of the family. In essence,Denise chose to not make herself the second victim of this recurrent cancer, and it was clearly the right choice.

How did Denise do it? Well,for one thing she is a person of deep faith and she followed the still small voice within her, meditated on good things, and prayed regularly. That spiritual focus strengthened to keep emotional and mental focus, which allowed her to physically focus on each task at hand.

In essence, Denise’s faith kept her able to control her thoughts, and her positive thoughts helped her to appreciate the need to take care of her own physical, mental and spiritual health.

Simple enough? Not easy, clearly, but simple. If it was a mathematical formula, it would look like this: F2 (faith squared) = T (positive thinking) + A. ( right actions.)

Just one last thing and then I’ll close. I’m NOt saying that all these people who relapsed from their fitness programs did not HAVE faith! I’m saying that they did NOT in faith do the right things for themselves.

What do you think?