The other day, I got an email from this silly weight loss app I’d installed on my phone. I thought that tracking my progress in the new year would help. Its title? “We won’t let you give up! Most people abandon their new years resolutions by February. Get back on track!” – or something super peppy that made me feel like someone was screaming at me through a megaphone. Wearing a jumpsuit. Kind of like the head cheerleader lady from Glee. On roids.
That kind of made me sad. And resentful. Just because I hadn’t checked in to use their app, they made a lot of assumptions about me. It was intended to give me a pep talk, but it annoyed me. I have enough going on, and now some rando is on my back about losing weight? Isn’t that what apps and social media do to us?
But the real question we often miss: why was I so offended? What does that say about me?
I had these grandiose plans to drop like ten pounds in a few weeks. Which was kind of dumb. I mean, really. Maybe I am not the best weight coach for myself.
Why was it dumb? For a few reasons. And do you see where I’m going with this? Because purging is the same way… This post is basically called: Cycles are totally normal. {And we can all use a little more chill.}
1. I wasn’t being realistic
Taking the math and the statistics out, I have to whittle it down to my own personal needs. I have dropped a few, and that’s pretty stinkin’ good. But the bottom line – I had to take my personal situation into consideration. And I’m not even talking about being a little more patient with myself. Which stems from deeper personal body image issues, but now I’m pulling out my psychiatrist hat so stay with me: Purging is the same way. If you dive into it head first, and you’re all, TRASH ALL THE THINGS! With no consideration to your own personal life… you’re set up for failure. You’ll just accumulate more junk when you’re done with this junk. Stop expecting perfection. You need realistic goals, and you have to be patient with yourself.
2. It’s not just about whittling it down
It’s not about the diet. I’ve compared simplifying to weight loss so many times because they are so strikingly similar in their own ways. Just like any process or commitment you choose to make in your life.
But diet… We use that word loosely. Anyone who has gone through this process, knows that it’s much more than that. Just like weight loss isn’t just about losing weight. Yeah it’s great to fit into that fill-in-the-blank-size here again, but it’s a lifestyle choice. And sometimes we find ourselves a bit too focused on numbers. It means I’m eating better so I feel healthier. Doing better over all. Just like eating healthier, purging you home is the beginning to a real change.
It’s about having a plan in place, and a system to help you get there. We have to stop throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you have a bad week, and don’t get to it, or you bring too much in than you would like {see: your child’s birthday} it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. You don’t have to trash it all. It means you get back on the horse with your revised plan, and keep going.
I will still have projects for our site, and design fun products, and make a total mess out of our crafting space that I have to purge all over again. It’s who I am in the creative process. I will still have books for my children in a nice library for them to pick from. I will still have laundry piled in the corner. It’s life. The important part, is that you stay the course.
3. It’s not about excuses
Cycles are normal. It’s totally normal to go through Christmas and feel like a total glutten, and then want to whittle it down in January. We are imperfect people, and the key is that you keep going.
Even if your husband brings home donuts and you have a sinus infection and you’re a raging hormonal lunatic so you start by eating half of one chocolate covered heart that they released just by Valentines day and then give in and eat more than one. {We’ll just leave that specific number right there}. This may or may not have happened, and I can have a salad tomorrow. I’m also going to enjoy my life when I want to. Do you see where I’m going with this metaphor? Stay with it. It’s okay. We’re only human, and it’s normal to feel like we’ve fallen off the bandwagon. It’s also totally okay to have days when your work piles up in your home office and there’s cute papers everywhere because of your intentions to clean and organize, which actually causes more clutter, that have temporarily fallen by the wayside.
Get back up. Keep going. Do better. It’s all going to be okay. And for what it’s worth…
4. Once you flip that switch, you start to see it differently
Focus on the small choices. The little changes. It’s about tiny increments, one day at at time. When you stay with it, when you get back on the horse even after stumbling, when you let go of perfection and just stick with it, no matter what… you’ll see it differently. Just like anything you want to change, it’s a simple issue of readjusting your focus. Stop expecting to live in a tiny white house in the alps, and adjust it to your needs. To your lifestyle. This is not a one size fits all equation, and it’s going to look different for everyone.
Half the struggle, is letting go of that comparison trap. I think that we compare ourselves too often, to all that rampant over-saturation on the internet. We forget that behind the Facebook and Instagram posts are real lives and struggles. It’s so easy to fall into looking at what others have or don’t have or what they’ve accomplished. To be critical of ourselves or critical of others. We justify the heck out of our choices because we’re all just terrified we’re making the wrong ones. We become haughty about it. From education for our children, or looking at body builders on the internet. It’s exhausting, if we let it be. We’re all on different paths, and it’s all about your life and the struggle you’re ready to take on to accomplish what you want from it.
I think the key is taking your own talents, with your own life and making it work for you, as only you can.
5. Remember, you’re not alone
There’s a shift of the pendulum from what we had with our childhoods with society in the ‘booming’ decades before us. I think that a lot of our generation is beginning to feel it.
The recessions and the realization that nothing is guaranteed from everything jobs to our shining, current example: real estate. {Hello, we can’t sell our house.} We’ve redefined the ‘American dream’ (whatever that’s supposed to be) within our own lives. It’s about so much more than the new year and cleaning out your home a little. We want to run far, far away from the Joneses. Because in this world, it will never be enough. I want to be a revolution in my own life, with our own family. A life of excess brings less. A life of less is more. So it’s simple, really. Less is the new more. The simple life.
Simple. Not perfect. Remember that.
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So take your stumbles, your burn out, your backslides or whatever you want to call it, with grace. From weight loss to organization and any new years resolution that you want to take beyond the new year… you’ve got this. It’s just a matter for forgiving yourself, accepting what it is, and moving forward.
One step at a time. Cycles are totally normal. And we can all use a little more chill.
kate says
totally love this.i have this theory that we live in a ‘give it to me now nation’ i mean seriously, fast food, we have all of the answers on our phone (google), we expect results now. for everything. to include weight loss, its crazy and unrealistic, but it is the lifestyle that we Americans have created. Slow down, take a chill pill, put down your phones and I don’t know actually BE IN THE MOMENT, instead of recording it. i really appreciate your post today!!!
ashley @ the handmade home says
Amen! ?
Marian@cmshawstudios says
I am living this right now. I am attempting to pare down all the stuff (using the MariKon method) and just dealing with my jewelry has taken almost a month. There are snow day reasons for this, but I just keep chugging away. And it was super cool to get a favorite pair of earrings back from being repaired at the jewelers after being sad about them breaking 6 yrs ago. I am also trying to break my food and a Diet Coke addictions. I figure that losing weight will not be a permanent change until I deal with my relationship with food. So each day, I try to eat only when I’m hungry and to stop when I am full. Some days this is much easier than others. But I really want these changes in my life, so I just keep plugging away.
Thanks gorgeous the pep talk,
The Other Marian
Alison Corigliano says
I’m slowly but surely doing this. All. Of. This.
Also, I’m seriously trying to figure out how to do a shared closet in my oddly constructed bungalow. I can’t stop thinking about it.
Tiffany says
Love love love this post!