Conditioning the mind is so important. Where the mind goes the body follows

For me the most difficult part of competing is not the clean eating, not the hard workouts but waking up earlier to workout.

I found the following quote "Conditioning the mind is so important. Where the mind goes the body follows". I really needed it and I found it just in time for my workout. You see, I spoke to Tony yesterday and he gave me a gruelling workout. I have 17 days left and I have to step it up and really focus for the next 17 days. I am attempting to workout in the morning, and when I can't, I do it during my lunch hour. To me conditioning of the mind is believing that you can do it. All throughout my workout I keep on thinking "conditioning the mind, conditioning the mind" and this helped me get through my workout. I find that I have to do "self talk" all day long, particularly now when my workouts are more difficult and I have to be 100% clean with my diet.

Last weekend my in-laws invited us over to dinner and guess what my father-in-law made for dinner? Fried fish, he knows I don't eat fried foods so he told me that he had crab cakes for me (extremely nice of him, but I can't eat that either). My in-laws do not eat anything unless it's fried (I may be exaggerating but only slightly). For dessert they had 3 different desserts, german chocolate cake, a pineapple coconut cake and some type of cream pie (thank God I am not a dessert person). My mother-in-law offers me cake. It drives me crazy because for the 7 years they have known me, I have don't think I have ever said yes to dessert when she offers, yet she will ask me if I want dessert or onion rings or any other greasy food that they eat. So on Saturday, after she offers, and I say know, she says, I don't know why I ask you if you want because you always say no. My response was, I am not sure why you continue to ask either? I don't get it and she really doesn't get it either because even though she has diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, liver problems (just to name a few of the things that are wrong with her, since there are many more), she refuses to clean up her diet or do any type of exercises (even walk) that my help her. She actually checks her blood sugar level and if it is okay, it means that it is okay to have more cake? I know I am going off on a tangent but but they are the exact opposite of my parents and the way I was raised. Growing up we didn't my mother didn't buy cookies, or made us pancakes, we didn't eat McDonalds and ate desserts like cakes on special occasions. We didn't have those things in my house and I thought it was normal. The first time I had McDonalds, I was a teenager. My parents gave us grapes for dessert and every now and then on a really hot day we went to Dairy Queen as a treat. Now I am told that this was not normal but now I am certainly not complaining and as a child I did not feel deprived. It's funny because when my mother visited, my in-laws offered her all types of junk as well and her response was no, I don't eat this or I don't eat that. Then my father-in-laws says, you know your daughter always eat healthy. Duh! See knows that, who do you think I learned from?

Happy Training!