I fell off my bike yesterday.
To be fair this has happened about 15 times in the last year or so, and it’s always down to my bloody cycling cleats (or more specifically, my inability to unclip them from the pedals on a consistent basis).
Wanting to stop, wobbling around at 2mph trying frantically to release my foot from the pedal, and then toppling over looking like a complete moron is quite a common experience for me now.
So when it happened yesterday, after my usual exasperated cry of ‘for f**ks sake’, I got up, bent my handlebar back into position, and cycled the final 15 miles back home.
Why am I telling you this?
Falling off the bike is kind of like falling off track on your weight loss journey.
You’re sailing along, making great progress.
And then, you start to wobble.
And you fall off.
Eat too much, drink too much, feel like you’ve stuffed up.
At this point many people think ‘I can’t do it’ / ‘it’s too hard’ / ‘I’ll never get there’.
And they give up.
But the thing is, we all fall off track.
NO one is perfect.
All you need to do is dust yourself off, and get straight back on it
again.
If I’d given up after falling off my bike I’d still be 15 miles from home and pretty cold and hungry right now…
Getting back on the bike and carrying on meant that
a) I got to have a very nice lunch at the pub on the way home, and
b) I reached my destination – very imperfectly, but who cares about that? I got there.
If you fell off over the weekend, remember, you’re not a failure, you’re just normal! You only ever ‘fail’ if you stop trying.
Get back on it today, keep going and, as imperfectly as everyone else, you’ll reach your goal.
Hayley x