Don’t Give Up

 

I received a message this morning from a client that was so excited she lost 15 pounds, even after being on vacation! This was huge for this particular client because she has been having difficulty losing weight due to the inflammation in her body.  I know her internal struggle.  I’ve been there for the tears.  This made my morning. When we are very inflamed, weight loss, will be the last thing to go as a result of addressing the inflammation.  I know sometimes this is hard to hear. 

It occurred to me after receiving that message that often, as practitioners, our clients journeys closely mirror our own.  There are no accidents.  This message today started me thinking about my own journey and how it mirrors hers since moving to New Mexico.  If you read my last blog post you know the story of my stressed out existence prior to my big move here.  Soon after I moved, I started putting on weight and couldn’t figure out why.  Sometimes, as a health coach, it is hard to be objective with yourself.  It is not as easy to unravel your own puzzle than it is to unravel a clients.  Let’s look at the onion and peel its layers back.  I was in an abusive relationship, lived in another stressful situation when I left that abusive relationship, moved twice (one across the country), went of birth control pills, increased my thyroid meds and stopped my antibiotics for the Lyme.  My poor adrenals!  My confused body did not know what end was up. I know what I would say to client.  Not so easy to have that talk with yourself.  I’m patient with my clients.  I meet them where they are at.  So very hard to do when it is you.

I can see how my clients can get frustrated.  I’ve been in this situation before myself.  Why work out and eat right when I continue to put on weight, or at least am not able to lose it?  This is the mentality that lurks in the back of my head.  And I’m sure it lurks in the back of my clients heads.  And for those of you that know my story, weight gain for a person with a history of eating disorders is equally devastating. 

But I continued on, doing my daily workouts and eating clean, confident that I would unravel the mystery.  Thank goodness for my boyfriend that didn’t throw me out of the house!  😉  Sometimes, as practitioners, we need to step outside of our own demons to see the bigger picture.  Sometimes our clients that are going through similar things help us to do that.  At this point, I’m pretty confident I’m on the right track and have answers with the help of some recent labs.  This morning I went for a run and was faster and less tired than I was last week, validation that what I’m doing is working, maybe just not as fast as I’d like.  Hey I’m human! 

I know sometimes it would be easier to throw in the towel, to sit on the couch with a bag of pretzels.  Trust me, it was tempting.  But if I hadn’t continued to move, if I hadn’t continued to eat clean then I would be worse off than I am.  It is so easy to keep going when you are seeing forward progress.  It can be so frustrating when you are working hard and not seeing the results you’d like.  But once your body catches up and once you address the issues that are causing your body to hang onto the weight and inches, you WILL see the results and all the efforts of clean eating and exercise will have paid off. 

If you’d like help getting to the root causes of why you are stuck, I’d love to help.  I know my journey has been helpful to many of my clients but their journey’s have equally blessed me in helping my own self to heal. 

I’d love to hear your story.  Feel free to send me a message or share in the comments below!

 

Peace & Love!

Heather