Friday with Heidi: Are you a tortoise or a hare?
Thank you so much for the big response to last week’s Friday with Heidi it struck a note with many of you and I am grateful for your feedback and response.
I had a great day off. I did nothing much. Sat in the garden, read my magazines and tidied the dining room!
So back to my original question.
Are you a tortoise or a hare?
Are you someone who rushes to lose weight, shape up and feel healthy 4 weeks before a holiday or a big event? Only to wait until the next year to do it all again?
Or are you someone who runs four times in one week, eats salad for lunch on three days a week and expects to see a change on day eight? And then, when you’re not half a stone lighter kick the scales, say it’s all a load of rubbish anyway and go back to your caramel latte and Weight Watchers brownies each morning?
If so, you’re a hare. 🙂 But then you knew that.
I’d like to introduce to one of my favourite tortoises…and she is another Heidi.
Please meet Heidi Sandford, she has been with FastTrack Fit Camp for 2 years and 2 weeks. How do I know? Because she does, and she tells me.
Heidi remembers her very first session. How awful it was, how she told herself she’d never have to come back and how she thought she’d stand ‘at the back’ (by the way there is no ‘back’ at Fit Camp – we’re in it on our own but all together)
However, something happened to her in that first session that made her want to come back– and over the next few weeks she just made sure that she got to camp. That was all she asked of herself. Go and move.
Within 6-8 weeks she describes here how she was feeling so much better that she simply forgot to take her anti-depressants that she had been on for years and realised that she was slowly changing shape too. She left her part time job and tentatively put her toe into the world of self-employment selling her hand drawn greeting cards.
Did she stop because it had worked? Nope, she carried on coming three times a week, making attendance as consistently as she could knowing it was helping her with how she felt and looked.
Were there days when the depression felt like it was coming back? Yes … but Heidi says she always knew there was a Fit Camp session coming up that would make her feel better.
Slow and steady wins the prize.
Two years on and Heidi has gone from a size 22 to a size 12.
Has this week been at a Greeting Card fair in London selling her cards to the big boys in the industry and succeeding having left with orders.
Is happy to have her photo taken for this email!
Feels fitter, happier and healthier than she has for a very, very long time.
Did it take 4 weeks? No
Did it take 3 months? No
Has it taken 2 years 2 weeks? Not really, no…
It’s the constant, consistent practice of doing the right things time and again to get a long term sustainable and successful result.
What did she do?
She did exercised three times a week.
That’s it.
But she’s done it week in, week out for 2 years and 2 weeks and that has produced the wonderful cumulative effect that now shows in her glowing skin, naughty humour and size 12 body.
Is she done? No!
Will she continue? Yes, because she knows that it’s the combined practice of all her efforts together over time that have got her this far and that stopping now would be like stopping a roundabout whizzing around freely in a playground. As soon as you stop it spinning the effort required to start it again takes a lot more effort and dedication than keeping going whilst it’s part of your routine.
I love everything about Heidi’s story. I hope you do too and that you’ll take something from it for you in whatever you want to succeed in, be it savings, weight loss, health improvement, career progression.
Be the tortoise.
