Keeping perspective is a constant struggle for me. Part of it is the desire to always be improving, which is one of the things I love about weight training and power lifting. Up until a point that most people don't achieve (because it's almost impossible without dedicating yourself exclusively to training 24-7), it is always possible to lift more weight if you put in enough work. That constant possibility of progress is like a prize just slightly out of reach, something to always keep striving for. Although this same thought process makes it difficult at times for me to be happy with my own progress, because it's never quite enough to satisfy me, I think in general it's a fine and healthy attitude to have regarding weight in the gym, as constantly striving to lift more is part of the point.
This constant striving gets trickier though when applied to scale weight. For one, it's not desirable or practical to always be trying for a lower scale weight. Although this was my standard measure of progress for many years (and appropriately so for a long time), at this point it's not terribly helpful and mostly serves as a way to make me feel worse about myself. I realized recently that I will probably never reach my old goal weight of 175#. I don't even remember where I got that number from, but it's always been in my head as my "perfect weight." Perfect for what, I'm not sure. I know at this point it would be far from perfect for my ability to lift heavy and train hard, as to achieve and maintain that body weight I would either have to drop muscle mass or get to such a low body fat percentage that I wouldn't be able to eat enough to have enough energy to lift heavy.
A lot of this reflection was prompted by looking at progress pictures from earlier this year, about a month before my comp, when I was at 190# and still feeling pretty good (though certainly dieting hard.) I remember at the time not being that impressed, all I could see was my saggy belly and floppy arms. Looking at them now, I can see that I looked good. Yes, I have some extra floppy skin from a decade+ of being obese, but I was also lean and looked strong and fit. I remember clearly thinking that I was still fat and being discouraged by that as 190# seemed pretty good to me scale-weight-wise. I know now that it is pretty good, and I wish I had felt better about myself and my progress at the time as perhaps it would have prevented some of my post-comp binge eating (which was, in part, due to the fact that I "didn't even look that good so what was the point." So. Dumb.)
I have been really down on myself recently for gaining so much weight post-comp. I am sitting around 208# these days. I haven't hit this high a scale weight since January 2012, and that sucks. What I need to keep reminding myself is though, that 1) there's a lot more muscle in that 208# now than there was in January 2012, 2) 208# is still an incredible achievement coming from 300#, and 3) I will get back to my "happy weight" of 195# or thereabouts in due time. I say it was "easy" to put so much weight back on post-comp, but in reality, I did a lot of seriously crappy eating and serious self-hating for that crappy eating over those few months. There wasn't much "easy" about it.
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Training today was a good reminder of the importance of perspective. My heaviest lift of the day was supposed to be a 221# squat for 1 or more reps, but on the set before which should have been 197# for 3 I failed on the 2nd rep. I re-racked the weight and failed again. This. Was. Frustrating. Laying on the gym floor post-fail I considered crying but then figured my time and energy would be better spent getting whatever strength training I had left out of my legs (my stupid, stupid legs which would not squat for me!!) I texted Chris to ask his advice and he recommended singles at a slightly lighter weight, which I was able to do at 177# for 5 reps.
Getting back to the apartment today and checking out my newly created progress calendar-tracker-thing which sits above my desk and where I record my max lifts each week, it was comforting to see that two weeks ago I hit 195# for 5 and last week I got 197# for 3. I know I am not suddenly dramatically weaker than last week, but am probably instead feeling the cumulative effects of a long weekend without a lot of sleep, three weeks of a pretty intense new training program and honestly probably still adjusting to my new nutrition plan (though I think this is probably affecting me the least of the three.)
At this moment still working hard to keep that all-important perspective. And I'm definitely looking forward to drop-in meditation class tonight.
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