Keeping Score

As a child I never participated in any sports, I never enjoyed gym class, and when I did participate in any sporty games I was too self-conscious about my bad performance to care about the game.  Therefore, sports analogies were always L-O-S-T on me.  However, I recently had a huge realization that was a great analogy for my fitness mentality.

My husband and I have been gone on two weeks of (glorious!) vacation. Here's a few pics:

A little bright for us...

During those two weeks I allowed myself to truly relax, and that included a complete relaxing of my diet and exercise routine.  However, I didn't feel too bad about it.  It's healthy to allow yourself breaks.  Nonetheless, I did gain some weight.  (5 pounds) I expected to lose it pretty quick as I got back into the routine of healthy eating and exercise. To my dismay though, I have found that having the knowledge that I have gained a little weight has made me more prone to eating unhealthy, or deciding not to exercise.  It's been something that was on the back of my mind, and then yesterday I felt I got a huge understanding on what's going on.

Because I have been getting in better shape I recently started to join in on a weekly ultimate frisbee game my husband plays in every week.  Don't let the title fool you, this is no elementary school toss-the-frisbee game.  No. Every Saturday 20 muscly, intensely fast, guys get together and don't stop sprinting for almost 4 hours.  The game is sort of like basketball and there are a lot of turnovers and LOOOOOOTTTTTTTSSSS of running.

As I was playing the score was constantly being announced.  As the game got intense I started to notice that when my team was winning I was encouraged. My defense was stronger and I felt the need to play my best so that we would win.  (albeit, my best is still not the greatest, but I'm learning) However, when we were down I suddenly could feel how tired my body was. In those moments I didn't want to push myself harder. It felt like I wasn't going to win anyways, so why not give into defeat?

When I walked off the field a thought struck me: Why does the score affect the way I play?

Now let me break it down onto a level that might hit home a bit more.  Why do I let what the scale says affect the way I treat my body?

If you grew up in America, and especially if your a girl who grew up in America, then you're all too familiar with the power of the numbers on a scale.  'Weighing in' is almost always traumatic. Every girl has an ideal number in their brain, and the sad thing is most of the time we truly believe we can't be happy unless we are at that number.  That's just like the game.  We all want to win when we play the game, we all want the score to be in our favor, but the second that it's not we are devistated.

Why do we allow the score to have such power over our lives?  Going back to the game analogy, if every player on my team had not known who was winning, and instead had played their very best the game might have even ended differently! 

So. In case you're just as lost in sports analogies as I can be I'll break it down into this:

No matter what you weigh in at each week, you should still live every day to your best.  

If you are daily striving to take the best care of your body, I guarantee it will be a game changer that leads to a definite win.