This is a mantra I used to repeat when I was weaning myself off my exercise addiction.
I knew that I could work out for 4 hours a day, I knew that I could live off hardly any food, I knew that I could make it through the days starved and weak, I knew I could survive.
But I had to make the decision that I wouldn’t.
I didn’t want to suffer anymore.
I didn’t want to feel the pain of exercising my body to the ground.
I didn’t want to feel the gnawing feeling of unending hunger in my stomach anymore.
I didn’t want to fear fainting every other day.
I didn’t want to endure the overwhelming binges that inevitably flooded my weekends and left me feeling bloated, guilty and oh so ashamed.
I didn’t want to retreat more and more into my hole of hell.
I could, yes, but I didn’t do it.
And quite honestly, this decision hurt.
It was one I wavered back and forth on for months, maybe even years.
This knowing that I could shape and form my body all the way to her being a shadow of herself cast a long, dark shadow over my way to freedom – often threatening to pull me back into restrictive and obsessive behaviors.
What made all the difference though was learning that we really cannot overwrite our biology, that fighting our body will only work for so long, that despite the effort, the struggle, the harsh and hard fight against myself, “success” wasn’t guaranteed for the rest of my life.
That, plus the realizations that a) my weight wasn’t everything, b) having energy is actually quite amazing (who’d have thought?!), c) freedom from obsessive food and weight related thoughts was like living a brand-new super colorful life and d) life was too short to suffer the way I did.
And I actually began to create a life where 4 hours in the gym was just not worth it.
If you’re still caught in the “I know I can ______ so if I don’t ____ I’ll disappoint myself and will forever know I’m weak” pattern, take a deep breath and look at the big picture and ask yourself:
do you really want to suffer like this?
does knowing you “can” mean you “have to”?
is the effort worth the extreme pain?
is this what you want your life to be about?
There are no right or wrong answers here. There are only answers that lead to you to freedom and happiness and those that lead you back to misery.
The choice – as always – is yours.
Suffering or freedom? What’s it going to be?
***
Have you heard?
I am offering 3 life-transforming VIP Days where I take you through a unique process that’ll eradicate the core of your suffering and allow you to walk on the path to freedom with more confidence and the neurology to make it all fall into place.
Together we will get to the core of what’s keeping you stuck and in so much pain and we’ll let it allll go during the Breakthrough.
You won’t be the same person afterwards. I know because I’ve been deeply changed by the work we’ll do together.
Curious to hear more? Send me a message on Facebook or send me an email at anne-sophie@annesophie.us.
Photo by Andrew Bui on Unsplash
