Change is never safe, because the results are never guaranteed and the unfamiliar is always going to be uncomfortable - until we are familiar with it.

This is the part that gets me every time, the follow-through! I know I can do it. I've actually gotten that 6pack once, when I was fully motivated to control my diet along with workouts 3-4 times weekly. I was lifting heavy for the first time in my life as a response to my second divorce. I was loosely counting my calories and macros to make sure I was hitting my mark without extra calories and extra junk in my system.

I pretty much completely cut sugar out of my diet and participated in CrossFit HIIT workouts with a familiar group of people every morning at 6am before school. I truly was in the best shape of my life. In 6 weeks, I had managed to lose over 6% body fat from 18% to 12%, which beat my goal by a full % (I was going for a 5% drop over 6 weeks to hit my workout target).

But after 8 weeks of success, I tweaked my back doing a deadline and lost all my momentum. I couldn't work out for 4 weeks while I let my back heal, and in that time I wasn't able to sustain my healthy diet anymore. I fell back into old habits and I lost the gains I had made. In fact, I've never been able to get back to that level of fitness. I miss the teamwork of familiar faces in morning classes. I miss the community of people sharing healthy recipes and tricks to hit those nutrition macros without eating unhealthy food.

And now that I'm back home in New York City, what is standing in my way now, more than anything else, is the financial burden to get back to what made me so successful. Those CrossFit sessions I was paying for in Arizona got 3x as expensive in Brooklyn. Plus with all the tasty restaurants and delicacies in the city, it is hard to stick to a clean, macro-based diet, when going out to ear with my partner or with my friends.

Sure, change is hard. But so is the consistency to keep up with new habits when the going gets tough. When only you can sustain your new habits and you are cut off from your supportive community. As much as I want to plan healthy meals, meal prep on the weekends to set myself up for success, I haven't followed through in the three years I've been teaching in Brooklyn. But I can tell my body is getting a bit restless. It needs to workout. It needs to cut the sugar and refined/processed foods. It needs to get back to that machine that was in the best shape of his life when I was near my lowest point after my second divorce. I just don't want to have to hit bottom to be motivated to change. Still looking for that spark...