Today was an interesting day all around.  Because of the holidays I switched things up, so the only thing I did was my chin ups workout as outlined in Mission 1, Day 59: Program to get yourself to 1 chin up (or more).  Beyond that, today was a rest day. 

I started thinking alot tonight about why people give up and what it takes to stick with it.  I'm not talking here about people who try for a few days or weeks and then stop.  I'm talking about people who are producing good results, but due to some slip ups, they give up entirely.

I believe that it is extremely important to track your results to avoid this problem.  When you track your results you have a record of where you've been.  You can see the progress you've made.  This kind of record makes it harder for you to give up because you know that one day of slipping up will not put you back to where you once were.  Using myself as the example, I look back at my original photo from several months ago and I see how fat I was and I know that slipping up and eating pizza or a burger in an unplanned manner (we are not talking about a cheat meal that is planned) will not put me back to where I was.  I just have to pick back up where I left off and start eating clean again.  That's the key.

Giving up cannot be an option for you if you are going to make it.  At the same time, if you have a moment of weakness, admit it on your blog.  It is called an accountability blog for a reason.  You use it to hold yourself accountable.  By posting your moment of weakness on the blog, your readers can step in and help you get through it.  Having a like-minded group of individuals hold you accountable is a big part of the success you will have in a situation like this.  You want to burn fat?  Find people who also want to burn fat and hold each other accountable.  You messed up and ate like a pig?  Tell the world.  As Adam recently commented, the pain of the humiliation you face for failing completely will keep you in line. 

There is one major key here.  The accountability has to be real.  If you are posting and you don't really care what the readers think, this isn't going to work for you.  You have to sell out completely to the concept.  What I've found is that it starts out slowly and builds from there.  I personally started out blogging and failed at it the first attempt.  I just couldn't get myself to blog daily.  When Adam announced the first group shred, I just knew I had to give it a try.  I started out just routinely blogging each day and visiting the blogs of the other shredders.  Eventually I started to get ideas from what I was reading.  My mind started to jump to all the great things I could do that would ratchet up the accountability factor for me.  My Christmas surprise has something to do with ratcheting up the accountability factor for me.  My podcasts are similar—they keep me accountable by having me put out there the things I do in my workouts.  If I am doing something wrong, one of you is going to call me on it (I would hope).

The bottomline is that failure should not be an option for any of us.  Anyone who has blogged daily for more than 30 days has what it takes to succeed.  It isn't easy to find the time to do this every day, let alone comment on other people's blogs as well.  I've personally found that I have to actually schedule the time to do it or it doesn't get done.

So, as we go forward, I know I will come up with other ideas.  Some of them will be crazy and some will not, but I'm going to keep the ideas coming.  You never know who you are helping when you post the things you post.  To me, that's one of the things that keeps me going.  I know how I felt last year when I began this journey and I am hoping that my passion and committment shows through in these posts so that someone in a similar position will see that if I can do it so can they.

Until tomorrow...