My son Max just started playing football this year.

In his first full game, he got tons of playtime! After the first quarter, he came in to play Tight End, Linebacker and both sides of special teams. Meaning he basically didn’t come off the field.

The game was tight to the very end. On defense, they stopped Severna Park and forced a kick. Our guys had to catch the kick-off, drive the field, and score a touchdown to win.

It was setting up perfectly for the comeback. That is until the kicker shanks the kick and it only goes 10 yards…straight up in the air…and Max doesn’t see how short the kick is, because he’s supposed to be blocking runners.

You know where this is going, right?

That stupid ball only goes 10 yards and hits Max in the leg, rolls directly into the arms of the kicking team, and it looks like he lost the game for us.

Good news is that Glenelg stopped that drive, forced a kick, drove the field AGAIN, and scored 6. We won’t talk about the insane call the refs made that lost us the game, because that’s not the point of this blog.

The point is, he couldn’t let the play go. He felt so guilty that he “lost the game” that he was pissed and sad after the game.

We’re all “you’ve never played a football game in your life”, and, “you couldn’t have known the kick would go 10 yards”, and ” don’t they yell out something if the ball is going to hit you?”

After a while, we talked him down and he realized it was just crappy luck. And besides, they still almost won the game! (he’s the one on the right side, closest to us)

GUILT is a terrible weapon we use against ourselves.

It has the power to wreck not only your current effort, but all future attempts.

When it comes to fitness, do you have a sense of failure about your past? Do you feel guilty that you just haven’t found the willpower to succeed? Do you feel like others make it work and you can’t so there must be something wrong with you?

If I know one thing, it’s that women tend to relate to fitness/fat loss/ health with lots of pent-up guilt and negative emotions.

Just like I told Max when he came off the field, I’m going to give you the same message.

As hard as it is in this moment, you have to let that crap go! You can’t do anything about what you did or didn’t do well in the past.

You have to “fail forward” as one of my coaches used to say.

So you did 3 diets in the past and gained the weight back? Whatever. I’ve worked with thousands of women who’ve “failed” in the past and finally figured things out in our program.

So you had a great routine through your mid-30’s and then totally lost it as your job and family demanded more of your time? That’s totally understandable! Let’s get back at it now and find a way to make it work.

It doesn’t really matter what you did or didn’t do before as long as you can start putting one foot in front of the other and taking action.

I encourage you to think about the things that went wrong in the past so you can fix them.

Did you always try crash-diets? Great, let’s work on making an eating plan that isn’t miserable. Studies have shown most people gain that fat back, so it wasn’t actually your fault.

Do you tend to see success and then bail the minute something else pulls your attention away? Great, let’s create some accountability so you don’t lose focus.

Guilt has this addictive quality like all negative emotions. We can get pretty wrapped up in it.

But what is it protecting? You…from doing the work.

Seriously, I challenge you to think about the biggest thing you feel guilty about when it comes to your body/health/fitness and get serious.

Bail on the guilt. Take what you can learn from prior efforts. Then transform that pain into a solution with action.

This is the first step to the results you want so deeply!