Monday, February 9, 2009

The Balance

When training for an Ironman, the concept of "Balance" becomes very important. We want to balance the workouts of the different disciplines and we want to make sure the balance between rest day and workout days is just right. We balance our time between work, and hours of workout and family. We balance our nutritional intake to match and help sustain hours of output.

And in this world where I find myself now, I realize that my life prior to Structure House was very OUT of balance. Too much work, too much food, not enough sleep and too much workout too fast. One of the striking things I am seeing here out from under a haze of food is that my life was too crazy and to compensate for it, food was the reward.

Food has always been my "go to friend". Its there..day or night. Unlike an alcoholic, Im not gonna get pulled over for having a supersize fry at arms reach, but binging can be just as deadly.

So now is the time to find the balance. Before I came up here, getting out to do a workout was just a chore. Now I look forward to the run, or the ride or the time in the pool. Everything seemed to be such a task to complete instead of a life to live. Things look different through clear eyes.

So everyone asks....but Im not focusing on the weigh loss. I will let you know at the end of 30 days what I have lost but I have not been disappointed. For now its about determining what rewards I can put in my life that arn't food based and how to balance my life without using food to compensate. For now, its about training, and eating well and learning everything I can in the next 3 weeks.

More to come....

2 comments:

Lani said...

My friend, I admire you. You are willing to wear your heart on your sleeve for us all to learn from. More people should step up to the plate, admit what is wrong and deal with it, it is far easier to hide from our problems than to deal with them.

Julie said...

I agree with Lani. I just want to say that I understand your relationship with food and it takes a very strong person to dig deep and find out why you have that relationship. It is a big step and very important.