Thanksgiving is four days away. But I want to tell you today, right now, that if you have a piece of pumpkin pie, you didn’t blow it. 

If you lick the batter of the pumpkin pie while you’re making the pumpkin pie, you didn’t blow it. 

If you have mashed potatoes and gravy and stuffing and several helpings of each, you didn’t blow it.

In PA, we call these gobs. But in Maine they are whoopie pies. Whatever you call them, if you eat one, it doesn't mean you blew it. 

I often have clients who don't even want to meet to talk about nutrition this time of year because "I've been bad. I've been awful."

No. You haven't been bad. And you haven't been awful. 

You've been human. Human, okay? 

What you may have done though, is decided that after one or two cheat meals and a few missed days at the gym, you've completely screwed up all of your goals. 

No. No you haven't. 

The only way you blow up your nutrition or exercise routine is when you give it away. When I coached softball a few years back, our team struggled for wins and had plenty of games where the score was out of hand. And the only thing I asked of my players in those games was to give nothing away. 

You know what the hardest thing to do is in moments like those? 

Give a shit. (Sorry mom, I said shit. Again.)

It is so tough to drag the bat up to the plate and swing like you care because when you’re losing 18-0 in the third inning, even a home run is just a drop in the bucket. So what does your at-bat and your effort even mean in those situations?

Everything. 

You caring means everything. You caring enough to try matters. In that situation, your effort matters to your teammates, to your coach, and to you. That at-bat matters because you matter. Because we don't play sports and love sports for championships and play-off wins. We play and love sports for the moments. 

And your fitness and nutrition journey is no different.

What matters is you giving up. When you decide that because you ate something that was not on your plan, you should chuck the entire plan. When you judge yourself so hard because you “slipped up.” 

When you decide that you can’t stick to anything, that nothing will ever work, that you might as well not even try because you ate something that wasn’t on your nutrition plan. Or because you missed one workout. 

Researchers actually named this the what the hell effect. You got up and had a cookie for breakfast and decided that the day was lost. So you might as well do fast food for lunch and pizza for dinner and start again tomorrow.

 So today I challenge you. 

That eating a donut for breakfast when your in-laws brought donuts doesn’t mean your day is blown. 

That missing the gym for the past three weeks in November doesn't mean you have to wait until December. Or January. Or even Monday. 

And eating a piece of pie - even eating a whole pie - does not make you a bad person. 

Let me say that again. 

You are not a bad person if you have a meal that doesn't meet the nutrition goals you outlined with your coach. Or in your head. 

Please hear me when I tell you that you are not a bad person.  

This is my favorite quote:

"It is never too late to become what you might have been." - George Elliot

It's not too late. You're not a bad person. You can do this. 

But what you can't do is throw in the towel. (In Pittsburgh we wave our towels, we don't throw them.) Don't give up on you. A donut for breakfast does not mean you start again tomorrow. It means that you had a donut for breakfast.

Believe in yourself. And believe that one or two or five decisions doesn't define you. Ok? 

Do you want help not throwing in the towel? Do you need help believing in yourself? Do you want some guidance and a judgement-free zone to make a plan? Email me. Message me. Comment below. I'd love to hear from you. Do you have a topic you'd like to see addressed? Let me know that too. Be strong. Be kind. To others, but especially to yourself.  

One foot in front of the other.

This was my mantra. It’s what popped into my head as I jogged the first two flights of stairs at the Fenway Park Spartan Sprint over the weekend.

By the time I bear crawled the last two flights of stairs at the start of the race, my legs were garbage. 

One foot in front of the other.

We jogged around the stadium, weaving our way through the seats and up stairs. I didn't feel like I was in my body.

I slowed to a walk as I went down stairs, and heaved my way up the stairs, worrying that if I tried to go faster, my wasted legs would miss a step and I’d face plant into the concrete.

The last few weeks have been a struggle. And my body felt every bit of that struggle on Saturday. 

I’ve talked openly about my journey with depression - and some of you may recall my story from 2005, when it was a failed run that helped open my eyes to my misery. It was as a result of that run that I realized that maybe, just maybe, life could be better than either awful or just ok. 

I slugged my way to the second obstacle  - box jumps - and looked out at the field, at the Green Monster where other runners were racing in front of me. 

For the first time, I considered that this might be the first race in which I participated and never finished. 

I watched women half my age effortlessly jumping up and down onto the concrete box and tried to will myself to do the same. But my legs weren’t having it. I did my step ups and thought, one foot in front of the other. 

Then I went back to my mantra - one that I’ve used in races in the past - I am strong, I am capable. 

But I didn’t believe it. 

I kept going, keeping up with my Spurling teammates as best I could, doing obstacles where I could and burpees where I couldn’t (83 to be exact). And all along, repeating my mantra.

I am strong, I am capable. 

One foot in front of the other.

I didn't believe the first phrase and was struggling mightily with the second. 

I don’t know if I ever believed that I was strong or I was capable last Saturday. But I kept telling myself anyway.

Don't get me wrong - there were plenty of other thoughts going through my mind. The usual negative soundtrack was playing. But I tried to interrupt it as often as possible.  

In talking to many clients over the past few weeks, I know that much of life has felt the same for you. The time change (which is no small thing), being without power for a week, whatever the case may be, many of you have struggled as well.

I'm not sure what you think in times of struggle. Maybe you've also told yourself things that you just couldn't quite believe - trying to interrupt your own negative thoughts. 

I am strong, I am capable.

I can do this.

I will do this.  

It can be really tough to give ourselves a positive message in hard times. It's a practice and one that I'm not great at. But I'm learning, slowly, to deliver the positive messages where I can, even when I don't believe them. Because eventually, we absorb it. We start to live it. And gradually, we feel it. 

By Sunday morning I was feeling a little more myself. And I tried to remind myself that I survived. 

Life can feel really hard. It can feel like a struggle. Those peaks and valleys will always happen. 

But we get through them. And hopefully come out a little stronger on the other side. 

I have a question for you. 

Yes you, sitting there, paying attention to your fantasy team and reading this blog post. (Thank you, by the way, for reading this post.) 

Sister Mary dropping knowledge bombshells. 

When’s the last time you made time for yourself?

When’s the last time you even put yourself second? 

Heck, if you named all of the people you are caring for in your life right now, are you even on the list? 

You're a generous soul. I know that you are. You often put your own goals or needs aside for the sake of taking care of someone else. You volunteer for fundraisers at church, you drive your kids and their friends to practices and games, you look after your aging parents and neighbors. 

The list goes on and on. 

You never say no. 

Intellectually, you know that you need to take care of yourself so that you can take care of everyone else. That if you don’t address your own needs you’ll never be able to provide for all of the other folks in your life who rely on you. 

You know this. 

But knowing that you need to make it happen. As I hear everyday from so many people - I know what I need to be doing. I'm just not doing it.

We all have our reasons for saying yes to everything. So many of my clients are good and kind people who genuinely want to help as many people as possible.  

But it's also more than that. 

We not only want to help others, but we can't stand the idea of letting someone else down. Many of us know that we need to care for ourselves, but feel guilty if we do. I am so good at guilt. I'm gifted really. 

For me it’s a combination of wanting to help and feeling guilty if I don’t help. But sometimes I also want to fill my time focusing on other people because I’m afraid to focus on myself. Sometimes I’m afraid that if I have too much time in my head, I’ll sink into another depressive episode.

Sometimes an exclusive effort on other people is a great tool for avoiding our own self-work. I have plenty of my own flaws to work on, but if I say yes to enough other people, I don't have time to work on or even think about my short-comings. 

The thing about saying yes to everyone though, is that it eventually catches up with you. Maybe not that day, or that week, but somewhere along the way you have sacrificed sleep, rest, alone time, and find that you are exhausted, short-tempered, and frustrated. 

As most of you know, I spent my senior year of college in the convent, with the Sisters of Saint Joseph. I learned a lot living in community. The most important lesson was to never snap Sister Nancy in the butt with a towel. 

But the second most important lesson was from Sister Mary, a campus minister who often worked with overtaxed college students like myself.

“Do you say no to anything?” she asked me one day.

I shrugged my shoulders. No, not really. I can’t say no, I said.

She looked at me. 

"Then don't think of it as saying no," she said. "Think about it as saying yes to yourself."

That was one of the greatest "aha" moments I had in college. 

It’s not about saying no to someone. It’s about saying yes to yourself. 

My challenge to you today - yes you - sitting there, drinking your coffee - is to think about something you can do for you today. 

Say yes to yourself. 

You are important, just as important as everyone else. It’s hard to believe that I know. But that doesn’t make it any less true. 

Say yes to yourself.