H.U.M.A.N.

I am human. We are all human. What exactly does it mean to be human? I was thinking about this one day as I was pondering all the changes I’ve been making in my life in the last few years and I came up with an acronym for the word human. It is: 

Hasty

Undesirable

Missteps

Are

Normal

When a person decides to make long-term changes it doesn’t always go smoothly. As a matter of fact, it rarely goes smoothly. When a person has habits that they’ve been living with for years, it isn’t easy to change them and it doesn’t happen overnight. I am living proof of this. I have realized that no matter how perfect I want to be and no matter how determined I am, I will experience times when I make hasty undesirable missteps. I also realized this is perfectly normal.

In October 2004 I made a commitment to change and live a different lifestyle from any way I’d EVER lived before. I decided I wanted to lose weight and in order to do that I knew I was going to have to do two things 1) eat differently and 2) exercise consistently. Exercise hadn’t been a part of my life for several years, but as I was growing up I loved playing sports. I was the only girl in my high school that took P.E. classes after the required class our freshman year. I’m proud to say I took P.E. all four years and I loved every minute of it! So even though I had not been exercising I knew I wouldn’t have a hard time working it into my life because I knew I’d enjoy it. Eating on the other hand was a different story. Prior to 2004, I don’t ever remember eating healthy. Sure, I ate healthy foods, but I ate a LOT of junk. Healthy eating was going to be the challenge for me. However, I was so determined to lose weight that I managed to change my eating habits. I ate using the divided plate method. I ate normal sized portions of protein, high fiber carbohydrates, plenty of vegetables and some fruit and dairy. For the most part I avoided junk food. I lost 40 pounds in 14 months. I was so happy, but I was human!

From 2006 to 2012 I continued on my journey with a lot of H.U.M.A.N. episodes. I never really gave up on the healthy lifestyle/losing weight, but I definitely had my periods of time when I didn’t exercise consistently or my eating habits weren’t so good and I gained some of my weight back. In June 2012 I had an “ah ha” moment. It was the moment I decided I REALLY wanted to seriously get back to this journey of living a healthy lifestyle. At that point I was experiencing a lot of fatigue, which was totally abnormal for me. I was tired of being tired. I had begun eating a paleo diet (NF: The Beginner's Guide to The Paleo Diet) to see if that would help and although I found this to be a way of eating that I really enjoyed it didn’t seem to be helping my fatigue issues. So on June 16, 2012 I redoubled my effort and I haven’t stopped since. Now that is not to say in the last year and a half I haven’t had some H.U.M.A.N. episodes because I have.

I realized something, no matter how long I’m doing this I will always have H.U.M.A.N. episodes because, well, because I’m human! Each and every time I have a H.U.M.A.N. episode I could see it as a failure or I can say, hasty undesirable missteps are human and it’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t mean that I can’t pick up where I left off before the H.U.M.A.N. episode and move on with my life. After all, what is one H.U.M.A.N. episode in the whole scheme of your life? I am a huge fan of the Nerd Fitness site and Steve has a post about this very thing. It’s titled “GetThe **** Over It.”

Being H.U.M.A.N. means that even with the best of intentions, sometimes you just do something that isn’t perfect. Let me ask you this question. Do you know anyone who is 100% perfect? No. Hmmm, that doesn’t surprise me. No one is perfect. So then, why is it that when we decide to make some changes to live a healthier life we expect ourselves to be perfect? Stop, stop right now! Stop expecting yourself to be perfect and then beating yourself up when you have a H.U.M.A.N. episode. After all, we are all human. All of us need to realize hasty undesirable missteps are normal.

I will leave you with this one thought. When you have done something that you consider to be a failure, I want you to think of one thing. What would you say to a person who came to you with the same issue? For example, since the beginning of December I have been eating very healthy. Then about two-three weeks ago I let the number on the scale depress me and I ate some junk one day. One day turned into two days, and now I’ve gone about 3 weeks with eating more junk than I’d had in two months. I could get really down on myself and say “You’re such a failure. You won’t ever get this right. You’re doomed and you will NEVER get to your goal weight.”  Or, I could think about what I’d say to someone else who had experienced the same thing. This is what I’d probably say to them, “Hey, I understand. It’s okay. Think about how many good days you had in that 2 ½ months vs. the number of bad days. The good days far outweigh the bad days. Also, you were doing some awesome workouts and you never let those go. You can do this. You hit a little speed bump and it knocked you off your bike. Get back on and get going again, you can do it!” So if I’m willing to cheer up someone else with positive and encouraging words, why must I kick myself, making myself feel worse than I already do? The point is, I shouldn’t! I should treat myself with as much respect and encouragement as I do my fellow man/woman because we, myself included, are all H.U.M.A.N.