Reset

When I was in sixth grade my best friend was Missy Harmon. She used to come over to my house after school, and we would play video games on my most-awesome Atari 2600. We usually played "Frogger" or "Asteroids", and Missy would always go first. Every time Missy messed up, though, she would hit "reset" and start again until she found her groove. Going second, I never got to do that, and I wound up kicking her ass all the time, probably because I had to find my groove right away and keep going. Come to think of it, there's a lesson in there somewhere, but I digress.

My point is that, after a bumpy Week 3 of the Challenge and a shaky start to Week 4, I'm officially hitting the reset button today. What does that mean? It means that going forward, the Challenge is going to be the thing I use to center myself. My happy place. The well I go back to when I'm stressing or about to do something stupid, like eat a cookie or buy ANOTHER pair of shoes or procrastinate or tell myself I'm not smart enough or blah, blah, blah. I will no longer view it as something I have to stick to, but rather a constant I can come back to that will help me stick to other things--like keeping me focused when I'm about to lose my mind at work, keeping my commitments, overcoming my little day-to-day fears and anxieties, being nicer to myself and others...the list goes on.

I only intend to hit the reset button once, but once is all I should need. That's because I had kind of an "A-HA!" moment this morning in which I realized that it's not that I "can" do this Challenge or that I "want" to do this Challenge, it's that, in spite of a few hiccups, I AM doing this Challenge. And if I can do this--eat relatively clean, workout 5+ times a week, do an almost-unassisted-pull-up--I can do plenty of other stuff, too. Now THAT'S motivation!

So, in the spirit of starting afresh and taking pride not just in what I CAN do, but what I AM doing, I figured I'd take a snapshot in time of where I am midway through Week 4 of the Challenge, and see just how hard I can push myself to meet my end-of-Challenge goals in the next couple of weeks. It's time to take it up a notch, kids. And to keep myself honest and motivated, I'll monitor my progress at least three times a week and post it here. So, off we go!

As of 2/3/10

Weight: 117 lbs.
Body fat % (per scale): 15.4%
No. of inches at fattest part of thigh (the "Saddlebag Test"): 21.25"
No. of unassisted pull-ups: 0 (but did 3 in a row today on the purple band)

More to come...