Success or failure

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Do you ever wonder if we, as a society, have such great expectations that we set ourselves up for failure?  I follow quite a few fitness/weight-loss blogs, and I have many friends (myself included) who are on a journey to get healthier and/or lose weight. 
While I quite often see posts rejoicing in a faster mile time, or lost weight, I also see posts where my friends are putting themselves down and kicking themselves for not losing "enough" weight or not setting a personal record.  I've been in that boat...I have some stubborn weight that I've gained since my wedding, and I just can't get rid of it!  It seems we're just not happy unless we can run a sub-30 5k, or lose 15 pounds.  But where do we get that from?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm with everyone else, striving for the best run time and to drop this stubborn weight, but don't you think we're a little hard on ourselves?  I know when I see shows like "Biggest Loser" and I see the dramatic transformations in the lives of the contestants, I want to acheive results like them!  But is that really possible?

We expect "Biggest Loser" results, but they are living a completely different lifestyle than most of us.  They are isolated on the ranch, with (presumably) only healthy foods to eat, no jobs to go to, and the opportunity to exercise 10+ hours per day!  No wonder they're dropping the weight they are! Now look at us: we go to work every day, eat the food that we have in our house and try to resist the temptation of that cookie (running a food blog doesn't help here!), and with all the other responsiblities of running a household, we're lucky to squeeze in an hour of exercise.

I do have to give shows like "Biggest Loser" credit, because I think what they do is awesome, they really are changing people's lives.  However, I think it also sets us up for unrealisitic expectations.  Now when I get on the scale each week only to find out that I gained a pound instead of losing one (or more), I'm disappointed.  I think, why can't I lose weight like those other people?  What am I doing wrong?  I might as well give up!  Instead, I should be focusing on the fact that I worked out every day that week, I have gained muscle mass (probably hopefully the cause for the weight gain), I feel stronger, and I feel healthier! 

I wonder how our perspectives would change if we looked at the positives intead of the negatives.  Rather than I'm fat, ugly, lazy, worthless, why don't we focus on I'm getting fit, I'm eating healthy, I have more energy.  I really think in time our perspectives would change and we'd feel good in our own skin!  Not only that, but I really believe that if we have a positive outlook, we'll start making positive choices which will (theoretically) lead to us acheiving our personal goals!

Let's focus on setting ourselves up for success!

(Thanks for listening to my ramblings, I've been thinking about this for a while, it just took some time to put it into the right words.)