Hot People Find The Fire

I was supposed to go to the gym today. I have decided that I will not be doing so. Today was crap. So was half of yesterday, actually.

But it makes me worried. It doesn't seem to take much for me to want avoid expending some energy. Finding your motivation in February is difficult. There's no sun, and it's effing cold here. Back in September I had glorious notions that I'd be skiing and snowshoeing and skating...but now I mostly just want to curl up under a blanket and drink milky tea. In fact, if I could skip work to do that, that'd be even better.

So...how do I make sure that this isn't a permanent state of affairs? Well...I don't really know. But I've got a pretty good idea. Way back in September, when I was all dreamy about what a Great Canadian Winter life I'd be leading, I took some pictures of myself. They were meant to be "before" comparison pictures to illustrate exactly how successful I'd been with Plan Abtastic. Then, of course, that plan was an epic failure. I took another one today...an "after" shot...for comparison. Only, instead of the "after" meaning "after lots of exercise and sensible eating", it means "after overcommitting myself, being more or less sedentary, and eating a steady diet of microwave dinners, pizza, subway and candy for breakfast".

Before
























After











Now, I don't want to get into the fine details of the analysis of exactly what's happened physically. And I'm sure my eyes are exaggerating the differences between the two pictures, but I think we can agree that one is preferable to the other. And it's not the "After" shot. In fact, I don't think the jeans I'm wearing in the before shot even fit anymore. But THIS. IS. MOTIVATING. This happened over a matter of months, and, frankly, it makes me frightened about what a year (or more) could do.

Now, I know I'm not supposed to be motivated by fear. I've been to several seminars given by highly respected behaviour change specialists suggesting that it's a bad idea to use fear to get people to do stuff. But I'm pretty sure the only thing that's going to work is to burn these pictures onto the insides of my eyelids and resolve to go. That's the only fire that's going to get me there.


...but not today. Today was crap.