Be Me-sponsible.

A blog two weekends in a row. I must be feeling inspired right? Actually I am, but not in a kick ass, turn my world around, change everything in a oner, and do it all by last Tuesday way. I'm currently inspired to be honest, realistic, sensible and me-sponsible. I hope you're still reading this and are intrigued to know what my point is.......which I'm sure I'll have figured out by the time I finish writing this!

How many of you had grand plans to implement changes on January 2nd? How realistic were your plans? What was the reason behind them? And was there actually a 'plan' in place? I did and that's what I'm going to refer to. I know I'm not actually that interesting but I can assure you that my January, and every other month, is similar to yours. Because of this, I'm quite sure many of us are feeling the same right now. I've spent the past month having conversations about everyone and their dog being unwell. It's rife! And that's why I can comfortably refer to myself in this blog. So replace me with you and see if this helps you to be a little kinder to yourself.

I ended the year with the flu which forced me to take two weeks off from training. I honestly can't remember taking more than a few days off in the past, but I couldn't have trained even if I'd wanted to. As much as this pissed me off I made peace with it as my body clearly needed a rest. My plan was to start afresh in January, to ease myself back in to training and tracking my macros, in order to start prepping for a show in April. I knew it wasn't the best transition into an intense training and dieting phase but I was prepared to go with it and see what happened. With three gentle and one semi serious training sessions in the bag, my head was in a really positive place and I felt almost ready to push a little harder. My mojo was back!

Then, right on cue, along came the shingles. I'll be honest and say that Chris and I actually laughed out loud. This is currently a major spanner in the works and has basically put my plans on hold. If I had imagined this situation I would have expected my response to be very different. But do you know what, shit happens! Sometimes there's no reason and sometimes there is. All that matters is that you take responsibility for yourself and think of the bigger picture. So what if I can't train as often or as hard as I'd like to. Dieting certainly isn't an option as my body is clearly stressed to the max as it is. If you're not an exerciser, or haven't made any body composition/performance goals, then I don't expect you to understand what the big deal is. But, if you're reading this then you're probably on a similar journey to me.

My response is to be me-sponsible. I'm going to go with the flow and listen to my body. Nobody should care about my health more than I do, and I like to think I set a good example to my clients in this respect. Your body is way more clever than you think. It's a very finely tuned piece of kit and when something isn't working right it WILL slow you down. If you ignore the initial warning signs it will send another message. All you have to do is give it some respect and listen. The only goal that matters in situations like these are to get better. At the end of the day I want to do a show this year, so my goal is to be well enough to do it as soon as is possible. Yeah I could keep pushing on while I'm being asked to slow down, and end up being brought to an absolute hault. Or I can be me-sponsible, patient, and intelligent, and do what will enable me to achieve my long term goals sooner. Guess which one I'm going for? It's a bit of a no brainer. Instead I'm going to focus on self improvement in other ways. My brain still works (honestly it does) so it's time to spend more time studying and make the most of my down time. The best part about any plan is that it can be altered to enable a successful outcome.

I could have written this blog about someone called Jean who's in the same situation. I'm hoping that blabbing on about myself sends a stronger message though. A fictional example never really has the impact. I'd actually put money on it that someone out there called Jean is also feeling run down and torn between speeding up and slowing down. And I hope that she chooses the latter. I think I've bored you enough by now (clearly I've got extra time on my hands), so I'll shut up. Have a great weekend and keep it real.

Feel free to drop me a message in the contact section or email me at lyndsaygallacher@gmail.com.