All In Your Head

I just finished reading Murakami’s Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World and it made me think about how it relates to working out.  I don’t want to spoil it for you (because it was a decent read, albiet a bit predictable) but it had a lot to do with the power of your mind.

The more I read about our own bodies and the things that it can endure, the more I believe that most things that are physically impossible have 80% to do with what we believe to be true.

I was just doing an ab workout and in the middle I started to think about what the point of it all was, whether I should be doing this on an empty stomach, if I was doing it for the right reasons, would I somehow end up working out my abs and get a lower back problem because it wasn’t balanced (and other questions that really didn’t need to be answered right then) and suddenly, I didn’t think I could go on and I stopped.  Once I started questioning why the hell I was doing any workout in the first place, I started to notice the pain and I started to wonder if I should be doing it at all.  And then I just sat there and stared into oblivion for a good 2 minutes until I convinced myself to go on.

Which really begs the question, if the problem is our mind when we are talking about physical things, are we going about it the right way to begin with?

Maybe we should start with questioning ourselves and why we are doing what we are doing.  To be honest, I think the reason I have a hard time sticking to an actual workout is because I don’t want to admit the real reasons I do what I do.

I think if I stop lying to myself, my deepest fear is that I won’t be thin.  There. I said it.  The ugly truth.  I have been thin all my life and I am terrified of what would happen if I wasn’t.  And it’s gotten to the point where it’s not healthy.  Not in the scary, I am anorexic or bulimic sort of way, but more In the getting in the way of happiness sort of way.  And my relationship with food/the ability to fully enjoy my life sort of way.

So there we are.  2015 starting out with a lot of hard truths.  The fact I have a terrible relationship with food, and subsequently, my body.  It’s not unfixable, but it’s going to be a hard road ahead.  Starting with figuring out why it terrifies me so much.  What that fear stems from.  Of being unworthy of love? I don’t know.  A lot of hard questions to answer.

Starting with the scariest place of all: your own head.