Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood
Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood was on while I was on the treadmill this morning.
I’m not really sure which one of my clever gym buddies put it on that channel and left, but I have my suspicions. And proper action will be taken. That’s just how we roll at my gym!
But as I tried to drone out dear, sweet, fabulous Mr. Rogers, I couldn’t help but be drawn in….just a little. I mean…I grew up with the man for Pete’s sake. It’s Mr. Rogers, y’all. THE Mr. Rogers.
And while you may think he has nothing to do with bodybuilding, clearly you are wrong. Clearly.
You see, Mr. Rogers was making a paper chain out of brightly colored construction paper. Allowing me to flashback to when life was simple, and I made paper chains. To when seeing a paper chain I had made hanging on the classroom tree filled me with a sense of accomplishment and pride.
And no matter what you buy to adorn a tree, nothing is quite as beautiful as something fashioned with love and hung with pride.
People tell me all the time they can’t afford to eat the way I do, train the way I do, or afford proper supplementation. Yet, I made some pretty big changes to my physique with littler more than a paper chain approach.
The chain that holds my diet together is made up of egg whites, rice, Ezekiel Bread, tuna, bananas, asparagus, and chicken.
My paper chain supplements? Good old caffeine via coffee and green tea. Not pill form, mind you, but real cups of green tea. I lifted for over a year before I would boldly enter into the supplement section of the health food store.
Jogging is the paper chain that helped me shed the first 27 of my 121 pounds. And I would go on to lose 50 before I joined the gym.
I made a lot of changes with my paper chains before I got serious about making a REAL difference.
We hear it all the time, don’t we?
“If I had only known what supplements could do, I would have started earlier.”
“I wish I had joined a gym earlier.”
But for me, it wasn’t until that tree was up and the chain hung that I could look and see what was still needed. The blank spots that needed some ornamentation. Or maybe some supplementation.
And it was at this point that I changed from a wide-eyed child wondering what lifting could do for me into a grown-up, willing to make sacrifices to get what I wanted.
I could give up dining out here or going to a movie there to buy the supplements I needed. I could give up going out to lunch to buy a gym membership. I could wear the same pumps a few more times to buy new running shoes.
Yet it all came back to the foundation I had built with those paper chains.
I lost 50 pound before joining the gym. I got my resting heart rate to 48 through running. I had my first glimpse of real girl muscle before ever ingesting my first Whey shake. My paper chain was long, strong, and firmly attached to that tree before the first ornaments were hung.
And I would not change the order in which I did things. I needed to understand clean eating before I added supplements. I needed to see that I would stick with my jogging before I invested in a gym membership. I needed to understand how my body builds muscle without supplements to know what it would do with them.
If you have not been at this long enough to see that your goals are worth investing in, keep making links on your paper chain. Don’t ever stop.
Keep making them till you can see the empty spots on your tree, and you are willing to do what you need to fill them.
August 21, 2008 at 5:42 am
Thanks for the kick in the pants. It’s easy to make excuses and you’ve reminded me to cut that out!
August 23, 2008 at 4:42 pm
"And I would not change the order in which I did things. I needed to understand clean eating before I added supplements. I needed to see that I would stick with my jogging before I invested in a gym membership. I needed to understand how my body builds muscle without supplements to know what it would do with them."
Again, Adina, you hit the nail right on the head