Have you achieved a goal and then lost it? Have you found yourself repeating the cycle of losing and gaining weight? Has life treated you unfairly? Don’t worry. You’re not alone. It does that to everyone. That is life.
I want to tell you how I deal with it by telling you my story. It works for me. It might not work for you. But it might. You’ll never know until you try.
I have been exercising since 2001...
In 2004 I reached my goal: I finally got the body I wanted. In 2008, I had a knee accident. I had three ligaments sprained from the bone (ACL, PCL and MCL). Back then I got only the ACL replaced because that was what the doctor recommended.
I started to exercise 3 weeks after the surgery. After 9 months of hard work and regaining all the lost muscle, I needed to go back for a second surgery because my knee was not stable. This time the doctor reattached my MCL. After my second surgery,
I lost my muscle mass again and took me a year to regain the muscle lost...
My knee was better and useful but not trustworthy for many activities. Anyway, I compensated with my right knee, which is the good one, and got on with life. After 8 years, those ligaments gave up after one day of snowboarding. I had stopped snowboarding for 8 years because I was afraid this would happen. But I thought my muscles were strong enough to handle the twist that snowboarding makes me do in my knee.
I went in for a third surgery. However, I used a different doctor, Laprade is his name. This time Laprade replaced all my three ligaments, ACL, PCL and MCL reconstruction.
The reason I am telling about my three surgeries, ACL, PCL, MCL reconstruction...
because the muscle that took me so many years to develop I would lose in 3 weeks. Not everything but a big percentage. Each time was like starting over, and it would take me a year to get to the fitness level I was before.
You might be in the same situation. Maybe you went through a hard divorce, your health was not good, or you lost your job. Before this you were in shape but after it you regained a lot of fat or lost your fitness level. It’s okay, that’s part of life. It’s okay to start over. Like I said, I know how difficult it is to lose what you have worked for, but what else are you going to do?
The key here is to be resilient...
It is to be patient again. It is to have a plan in place and follow it until you reach your goal. If you have done it once, you can do it again. Remember that it’s not about what you have achieved in your life. It is about the person you have become in the journey achieving your goals. You have acquired the knowledge and the skills to put it into practice and do it again.
Life is about reaching your goals and setting higher goals to continue progressing, and if for any reason you lose what you’ve worked so hard for, go after it again and put your heart into it. Like Silvestre Stallone said, “It ain’t how hard you hit… It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”
This is life. Life has misfortunes, and we can become depressed and complain about “why me” or we can just get on our feet and continue fighting. Don't let a set back keep you down in your knees and become submissive to the tasks life puts in your way. Develop a strong mind, do it again and never give up.