When the alarm clock went off at 4:30 a.m., I turned it off without even waking. By the time the second alarm went off at 4:45 a.m., I was already contemplating whether I was actually going to make it to the gym. The third alarm at 5 a.m. came with the final decision: I was way too tired to get to the gym. If I’m honest, this wasn’t an unusual process. It always takes more than one alarm to get me up, but on any other morning I would have found a way to ignite the day. I would have remembered all of the reasons why I’m doing what I’m doing, all the great things that come with changing my life, and I would have been in that gym by 5:15 a.m. Not this morning. On this morning, my “why” was nowhere to be found, but my pillow was and that’s where I stayed.

It wasn’t what I ordered. I specifically ordered a sushi roll that was wrapped in cucumber. This wasn’t an indulgence meal, I hadn’t planned for it to be, and therefore I had every intention of staying on plan. When the waitress set down the modern plate with the beautifully decorative sushi roll in front of me, I didn’t even notice it at first. I saw the sauce livening up the plate, the perfectly sliced avocado meticulously laid over each piece, and the rainbow of fish like a mosaic hidden inside a pocket. Then it hit me, “Shit, there’s rice.” My life nowadays doesn’t come with a lot of “can’t’s” because the new me doesn’t limit herself. But, my life does come with a lot of “I choose not to’s” and one of them thus far had been “I choose not to eat off plan.” Rice was off plan, at least for this meal.

I sat there in a silent panic. I honestly didn’t know what to do. Perhaps the obvious choice would have been to tell the waitress that this wasn’t what I ordered, have her take it back, and wait patiently for another 20 minutes while they prepared my “on plan” food. I hesitated because I wasn’t positive it was wrong. I pictured the menu and read through each roll in my mind. Was this the roll that was wrapped in cucumber or was it the roll at the bottom of the menu? Did I just order the wrong thing? My lack of confidence prevented me from bringing the mistake to anyone’s attention. I also was starving and I didn’t have another 20 minutes to wait. The same timing and starvation issues also ruled out the possibility of just boxing up the roll and ordering the correct one. Plus, I spent $10 on this roll- ridiculously overpriced- and boxing it up would be pointless as I didn’t plan an indulgence meal for later either. The final brainstormed solution was to just eat the middle of the roll, the part that was on plan, but I quickly ruled that out, too, couching my objection in the fact that it’d be a waste of money and food. Somehow that meant more in that moment than whether it was actually worth it to my continued success, commitment, and overall health.

So, in the end, the winning decision was to just eat the roll. It was only one roll after all. Just six bites. I’d let most of the rice fall off and I’d avoid letting myself clean the plate. How much rice is this really? There’s no way this one-time, unintentionally off-plan meal of minimal rice was going to derail me too much, right? But the truth was, a part of me knew it would. The extra calories and likely sugar wouldn’t make too much of a difference on the scale, but my mindset was about to take a blow. One small slip leads me down a slippery slope- something I’d learned about myself in the past- and because I knew it wasn’t the best decision, I devoured that sushi roll as fast as I could. I have no idea if it was good or something I’d ever order again for an actual planned indulgence meal, because those six bites were gone before I had a chance to think about it. I just wanted to get my mistake and self-sabotage over with.

The scale went up. It was another two-pound gain, but this time for the second day in a row. Four pounds in two days. My training has taught me that this happens. Our bodies retain water at various times, and it’d be nearly impossible to truly gain four pounds of fat- or muscle for that matter- in two days, especially when I was still exercising the requisite 70 minutes a day. So, it didn’t make any sense. My training has also taught me that the number on the scale is just data, and it only serves to provide information about our bodies, not define us as people. I truly believe this, and in fact have written before about us all needing to free ourselves from this number.

Any other day I would have walked away from the bathroom scale somewhat laughing. I have a tendency to talk to my body as an unruly child when things like this happen, so I laugh knowing that I am perfectly fine doing things the hard way. My body being stubborn is not going to stop me from succeeding. I didn’t laugh this time. I instead relented to the negative feelings and thoughts radiating through me. “See, I shouldn’t have missed that work out.” “I knew that sushi roll wasn’t on plan and I ate it anyway. This is what I get.” “Everybody else is dropping weight and I’m stuck in the 340s, what is wrong with me?” “I shouldn’t be hitting a plateau this early. I’m not doing something right.” “Maybe I’m just not meant to actually succeed. Maybe I’m meant to be stuck.” “Why can’t I get myself past a couple slip ups?” “I can’t do this.”

The struggle. We’ve all been through it. We’ve all heard that “the struggle is real,” and it is. Everybody has a struggle and it comes in different ways, at different times, and for different reasons. Regardless of how determined we are, how committed we’ve been, or how bad we want it, I don’t think there’s a way to avoid the struggle. I think it’s a part of every journey, and I’ve learned that it’s a very important part.

When I felt myself beginning the downward spiral and compounding my “failures” one after another, I was desperate to stop the spin. Old me was relentless in clawing her way back into my daily life with her negative self-image and delusional lack of self-worth, but new me wasn’t going to have it. New me took over and went into auto pilot to begin correcting the problem before I even consciously realized what I was doing. New me began reaching out to anyone and everyone I could. I talked about missing a work out, I talked about eating off plan, I talked about the scale going up. I confessed my slip-ups to my super friends, I admitted my insecurity and fears that I wouldn’t be able to get myself back again, and I let the struggle- my struggle– become a public part of my life. To me, voicing this vulnerability not only prevents it from silently and maliciously eating away at us, but it motivates us to change the situation, and it empowers others to help us get through. At least, that’s what it did for me.

It was during one of my desperate rants to anybody who would listen about what I did to sabotage myself that a friend of mine asked me what I would later realize was a very hard and blunt question: “Did you really expect to be perfect?” Personally, I had a reactive answer that I wanted to blurt out, but very quickly began wavering. The most realistic answer is, of course, no. Nobody is perfect. The ‘compulsive need to justify’ answer is “No, but…” Then the question becomes “but what?” My answer, the absolute truth, was yes, I expected myself to be perfect.

Isn’t it true that even though we realize it’s unrealistic, even though we often coach those around us that it’s okay to fall down, we still tend to hold ourselves to this unattainable expectation of perfection? I think that’s the reason every small slip can feel catastrophic. It explains the tendency to let the few drops of rain turn into a downpour. It was a huge wake-up call for me.

I was literally expecting myself to be perfect. I never anticipated the day when I would miss a work out or mess up slightly on the health plan, because even though I was told that it would happen and I’d have to survive it, I never expected it to happen to me. I found comfort in my perfect streak of working out six days a week and eating only the foods that were on plan. I figured if I was literally perfect, then it only made sense that the results would be perfect, too. Less than perfect wasn’t an option, and that’s what missing a work out or falling off plan represented. In my head, though somewhat subconscious until truly tested, there was only one road to success and I could only be on that road if I was perfect and deserving. Isn’t that the most unrealistic expectation you’ve ever heard? I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing to myself, but once I did, I laughed. Out loud. A lot.

I’ve talked before about committing to the reasons why you want to change your life, about being your own transformation everyday, about setting yourself free, and about the power of vulnerability. Now it was time for me to prove that I meant it. It was time for me to figure out how I was going to deal with this struggle, how I was going to be okay with “less than perfect,” and how I was going to continue to succeed anyway.

Here’s what I did: I celebrated the struggle.

We grow in hard times. The success that comes afterwards is really just the pay off; it’s not the place where we learn who we are and become who we want to be. Instead, we learn those lessons and become that person on the battlefield. That’s where we are tested, pushed, challenged. That’s where we have to dig deep even though we are exhausted and might not know how. That’s where we carve out who we are, how strong we can be, all the things we can do, and all the places we can go. It’s in surviving the struggle that we succeed. So, celebrate the struggle.

For me, celebrating my struggle has resulted in a complete mind shift. It’s become exciting. I even went out and bought some new ‘struggling work out leggings.’ I made sure they were colorful and loud, different than my usual choice of black, because these leggings need to scream “I MAY BE STRUGGLING, BUT I’M STILL HERE!” That’s my success story this time. That’s what the struggles above taught me. That’s where my inner peace and positive mindset live: in the idea that I am still here. I am still doing it. I am still pursuing my better life, living my transformation, and remembering my why. I am still worth it. This struggle, any struggle, will not get the best of me. It will never be the end of me. Because new me wants more, and new me is crazy enough to believe I can have it.

So, maybe the lesson here is that the expectation of “perfect” can manifest in various ways and can exist on any path. Maybe it’s our ability to keep going that truly makes the journey a perfect one. Or, maybe it’s not meant to be perfect at all, but instead perfectly imperfect. There’s so much we can learn on this journey, especially in the struggles along the way. So, instead of letting the struggle get the best of you, embrace it. Celebrate the fact that you are strong enough to struggle and strong enough to survive it. Live in the moment, learn something, and maybe go out and buy yourself some celebratory struggle pants.