Champagne and Socks

I’m back for round 2 of the 12 Week Body Transformation program. In fact I’m on day 3 because we started a day early to factor in Natcon (C bought the full week’s menus worth of grocery shopping and this way he gets a day off to eat what he likes and I have a day up my sleeve over the weekend in case …). As part of getting ready for the program, you have to complete some preseason tasks which make you sit down and mentally and physically prepare yourself to commit to the 12 weeks ahead. If you don’t have the equipment or a plan for how you will do the exercise, you won’t. And if you don’t really commit to the program, you’re not going to stick with it. I’d completed these tasks at the beginning of round 1 and thought that it would be interesting to return to those as I sat down to do these ones – see what had changed for/in me and what hadn’t. I still have the same excuses but I’m much less likely to let myself get away with them and I’m also much better equipped to think around them. I’ve definitely seen changes in the way I think about this stuff and in my attitude – not just towards this aspect of my life either. And the really interesting thing was, I was successful in round 1 – I lost 4 more kilos than the goal I set myself. So the audit was actually one of deconstructing a success not a failure. And that was a really fascinating thing to do.

In sitting down and working through what worked for me and why and then looking at what didn’t and how I could improve on that, and in working through a lot of the mindset material, I realised something really important. I was genuinely shocked to find I had succeeded at something – I had followed the program and the results happened – until I realised that I do this all the time with TPP. And that was my lightbulb moment – both that TPP works because I follow a similar methodology AND that I do not ever sit and deconstruct a win. And perhaps if I let myself feel worthy of the achievements I have made with TPP, then I would be able to acknowledge the steps that have brought them about. And that I already have a way of successfully achieving things that I could use in other parts of my life. Or … the program works if you work it.

So this weight loss and healthier living thing kinda is a sort of “magic” to me. I’m genuinely shocked when I get on the scales and see weight loss. It’s something new for me – to both consistently stick to a lifestyle and also to see a consistent decrease in my body mass (apart from that dark time in my past that I don’t really talk about). Michelle Bridges tells you to “not overthink it” and “to just fricking do it” and “go into robot mode” and so I really did just trust that if I committed to follow her program and did what she said it would work. And somehow I disconnected the fact that *I* was consistently making healthy food choices and that *I* started to deconstruct my various relationships with food and learned different self talk to move beyond them and that *I* showed up and did the exercise (for the first 6 weeks anyway). I disconnect from the effort I put into things and then I don’t value the outcome the way I would if I felt like I’d worked for it.

Parallels elsewhere in my life …

And so as I sat down to make my goals for round 2 of the program, it clicked as to why I had not only not put on weight in the 1 month break between rounds (as would have been my normal status quo) but lost a further 1.5 kg even though I let my calorie intake up just a smidge. Because I have very clear 12 and 24 month goals set. And that set of goals hadn’t really changed from when I sat down and embarked on this program in the first place. These goals are clear to me, they make sense, and they are with me all the time. They were easy to write down because they are … my goals. Big surprise. And they are big goals. They aren’t just “I want to lose weight” or “I want to look good in my wedding pictures”. In fact, I already look fab in my wedding dress and if I lose not 100 more grams I would be good to go. But the goals are more than how I look, they relate to how I feel (both my self image but also how I feel physically) and what I want to physically achieve in the near to short term. They don’t end at the end of the round or the end of the year. They truly are life goals so they mean that lifestyle and mindset changes are what I am actively working on. And that’s the difference. That’s why I was successful – my goals are big, long term and ongoing. And I’m committed to them. And so breaking the big goal down into 1 year, 6 month, 3 month, 1 month and 1 week smaller goals is easy and makes the big goal achievable. I know that as long as I continue to work at the program and see myself hitting the milestones, I will get there. The program works if you work it.

Dream big, break the dream down into small, achievable bites, and mark the small bites with milestones you can tick off along the way to mark PROGRESS.

The lightbulb? This is my approach to TPP. This has *always* been  my approach to TPP. At the very beginning, I sat down and dreamed big for this press. I wrote 5 year goals and broke those down to year goals and half year goals and project goals. And then I worked on them. And I mark my progress by ticking off milestones along the way. I have a very clear set of milestones I want to achieve, that I think mean I am achieving things along this journey. And I revisit the 5 year and 3 year and 1 year goals about yearly. And the long term goal has never changed, it has always been big and I’ve always dealt with that by marking out a path towards it and checking road signs as I pass them to make sure I am still on track. The big goal might still be on the horizon but I know I am further towards it than when I started because my milestones tell me so. The program works if you work it.

Everything I do is in pursuit of the big dream. It might feel insurmountable but that can only be so if you don’t know the path you’re going to take to climb it, if you haven’t broken it down into the step by step across the roadmap. If you consistently take one step every day forwards then you have to make progress in the long run. And if you never lose sight of the goal, you don’t get discouraged that you only walked one step today. I’ve seen that with the 12 wbt – that consistency is more important than anything else. For me, consistently turning down the random “treats” and fleeting food cravings has probably made more difference than anything – if you consistently say yes to chocolate where else can you expect to take yourself? And I know this about consistency – the one thing I always do, no matter what else is happening in my life that day – is I make sure I do 1 task/act to promote or raise the profile of my press. That might be sending out a review or a judging copy, it might be sending out a press release, it might be filling a sale order promptly or following up on an email straight away. I do something every day to push the reach of my press out further than it was yesterday. That means at the bare minimum, every year I have done 365 things to promote my press. And usually it’s never just 1. The “1” gets me through on days where I’ve had emergencies or was ill or had family commitments. Consistency every day of the year does more than a 2 week push around a new book release can ever do. And it works. It’s not magic. It’s business: it’s marketing, promotion, distribution and networking. It’s how you run a successful business. It’s how I am going to get my dream.

So. Huge lightbulb moment. Both for the body transformation and for my press. Lots of feedback and one informing the other. TPP has flourished because I had a plan and I consistently follow it. I can take that and apply it to other parts of my life. And I can see that the body transformation is not magic, it’s consistency, goal setting and good planning. And I don’t have to be scared about what happens after because – plan, goals, consistency. I know how to do that.

And for my press? Well. Just like there are saboteurs when you start to successfully make changes in your lifestyle, so you will have detractors. It’s like when I became a vegetarian and I started to notice people would be really hostile about it when I went out for dinner in groups of people. As though my personal choice not to eat meat was an act of judgment of them. I’m a greenie and I am happy that I don’t eat meat for environmental, political and moral reasons. But I tried for a long time to become vegetarian for those reasons alone and I was unsuccessful. The reason I am a vegetarian, and have been so without falling off the bandwagon ever for nearly 10 years now, is medical. And it’s noone’s business but my own. But it’s interesting to see people react as though it’s an overt judgment of them, as though what I do in my own life is somehow in response or related to them – and often people who I have nothing to do with in my general life. What? I’m going to become a vegetarian in case I randomly bump into you at a party and can pronounce how awful a person you, person-I-have-never-met-before, are in life. They react to my non existent pronouncement of their character because that resonates with a feeling they already have deep down inside. They think I am judging them because they judge themselves and find themselves coming up short. They feel bad because they already think they are doing something wrong. It’s the same as people who actively try to get you to break your diet or skip an exercise session. They don’t want you to be successful because it means that they are the reason they are not, or they don’t want you to look better than how they see themselves.

Parallels elsewhere in my life …

My successes are a result of my own hard work. And to think otherwise is to believe in magic (or conspiracy).

The transformation isn’t complete. I knew I would be doing round 2 and 3 of the program because it took me a lifetime of bad habits, both mental and physical, to get here and it’s going to take a lot longer to break through and change them and then to keep hold of the changes til they are my good habits. And I’m still working on *believing* and knowing things. But it’s a good start. And I’m really proud I got my own light bulb moment. Now I have to work on the embracing of it.