When I flew to Thailand in July 2019, I took an extra backpack with my Precision Nutrition textbooks and workbooks.
Did you know that my version 3 textbook and workbook weighed 5.6 kilograms?
My backpack must have looked heavy as when I went through Customs and Security at Auckland Airport, they asked me to weigh my bag. Lucky my laptop wasn't in it at the time cos that things an absolute beast too.
She asked me what I planned to do with the certification at the end.
I said I didn't know, probably nothing, I was studying just for me.
And then she said, 'oh well I guess you could just throw it at someone' and I must have looked at her really fucking strangely cos then she said 'well if you aren't going to use the certification, it's basically useless and you can chuck it'.
Up until then, I had been telling myself, and everyone else, that I was studying Nutrition and Nutrition Coaching just for me. Which is true.
Mainly because I was too scared to do anything else with it.
Anyways, I was in Thailand and I was getting my bearings and hanging out with Chantelle and trying to not get too scared about my upcoming surgery and liposuction. And she was studying nutrition as well - although she was doing the full nuts university degree and she's a lot smarter than me. And she started talking about all the things we could do and we talked about the people we could help.
And under my breath I was laughing ... 'hahaha yea right, who's going to listen to me?!'
Imposter syndrome was adding a whole lot more to the weight of those textbooks in my bag in the corner of my apartment.
I'd already talked myself out of doing anything with the certification I'd spent 18 bloody months studying for - and I had paid to do! Freaking Security lady was right - what a waste.
I do this all the fucking time.
Create excuses, or my own stories, about why I can't do something.
Or worse, why it's okay for me to half-arse it. Yea I post that meme "Don't half arse anything. Whatever you do, use your full arse" ... but I don't REALLY believe it.
Actually, I just don't action it.
Because I believed that I wouldn't be useful.
Getting to the end of this story ... we went down to breakfast each morning in Thailand and there's a large table where quite a few of the gastric patients sit after they are discharged. And you gotta understand, the first few months (fuck, the first year) after gastric surgery is hard. Sitting in a restaurant with a buffet breakfast, its fucking torture!!
But even though you have had an operation, you have to eat a little something.
Even if its 2 tablespoons.
So we are sitting there and each morning we would spend an hour to two with new ops talking about good breakfast choices, how to combat the tiredness, what the next few weeks/months will look like. And that's when I knew what I wanted to use my nutrition coaching for.
Even though I'd also been kicked out of the Gastric Patients Facebook group - because apparently no one likes being told what they should do in a lot of those groups. They just like being told 'there there, you're only human'.
Actually, you're a fucking dumb ass ... and if you want to try and eat ice cream at three days post op, then good fucking luck!
I obviously finally got sick of my own bullshit stories and realised if I want to be that person who sits at breakfast for 2 hours and talks to people about their bariatric surgery because they enjoy it, I had to admit that I was the one trying to pull the seat out from under me.
The textbooks didn't seem to be as heavy on my shoulders coming home.