Zapping Irrational Discouragement

My original planned title for this post was What I Know + What I Feel Still = Discouragement. I know that it's silly of me to feel discouraged after just a few weeks on this reinspired journey, but what my mind knows and my heart feels doesn't always add up. Still, I want to try to zap these negative thoughts.

I read somewhere once that your mind can't hold 2 conflicting thoughts at once--for instance, you can't feel resentful and grateful at the same time. So when I was looking for some witty saying using the word waste that I could replace with waist for Leslie's post tonight and came up with attitude quotes instead, it felt like chance to try to zap the negativity.

So we've been getting up to swim or do other exercise nearly every day since the week after Christmas. On Sat. the 9th, I weighed and showed a 3 lb loss. That was also our first day of working with our new trainer.

The next week, we worked with Ray 2 days and exercised every day but one. I planned my meals but ate out twice (one really big meal), and thought I did OK on 2 "punted nights" for dinner, but didn't really calculate. When I weighed on Sat. the 16th, though I showed a 2.2 lb gain. For a net loss of 0.8 lbs.

My mind says: Relax, it can take time to get it all in sync. And I am working harder to count/plan my punted meals, as I said in my Big 10 update. But my heart says: There it goes. . . you wanted to lose 100 lbs this year, and that means you need to lose 8.3 lbs a month, and you've already blown it in month one.

Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples, don't count on harvesting Golden Delicious. ~Bill Meyer

My mind says: You're doing great. You've exercised more days than you haven't since the first of the year. You're standing taller. Your pants felt a bit looser this AM. My heart says: This is about losing weight; if the scale doesn't move, what's the point?
 
If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it. ~Mary Engelbreit
 
My mind says: You know you're probably going to have to log your calories as you eat them, not just count on meal planning to keep your food levels in check. Just do it. My heart says: I don't want to track every calorie. How many stupid food logs do I have all over the house? Can I really be overeating that much when I'm trying to watch AND exercising? If it's that close in the balance, I'll never lose weight.

The only disability in life is a bad attitude. ~Scott Hamilton

My heart says: It hasn't even been a month and you're already disenchanted with exercise. . . mostly because you don't have time to swim every day, and that's the restorative exercise and the one you look forward to. The elliptical is hard and it makes me feel anxious that I can't do all the time on it I'm supposed to. My mind says: You'll have revved up days and dragging days; the key is to keep at it. And you're committed to swimming and will fit it in on the weekends plus another day as you and Hubby discussed.

It's so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want to. ~Annie Gottlier

And a few other great quotes just for extra safekeeping:

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. ~Winston Churchill

Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same. ~Francesca Reigler

So often time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key. ~The Eagles, "Already Gone"

Defeat is not bitter unless you swallow it. ~Joe Clark

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone. ~Robert Frost

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. ~Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818

What is possible? What you will. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. ~Katherine Mansfield