I know that I should be writing my food for the day yesterday and
plenty of other posts that I need to write, but I feel really strongly about
this subject so I feel I should write it now.
I have been asked before how I stay motivated and what motivates
me. So I’m going to tell you but I need
you to understand that what motivates me, may not motivate you. We are all different people with different
lives and all have different reasons for losing weight.
This is why it’s important not to compare your weightloss to anyone
else’s. Please try not to compare
yourself to others as you are only setting yourself up for failure. Not just with weightloss but throughout all
areas of life. Sure, it’s hard not to
think “why can’t I do that” or “why can’t I have what they have” but it just
takes you away from your goals and what you could be achieving. Concentrate on your own goals, what works for
you and what drives you and try to think “I’m going to do this” or “I’m going
to work to achieve this”. It’s really
hard to win against someone who never gives up, so be that person who never
does.
When it comes to weightloss our bodies are all different and they
process and operate in different ways.
What works for one may not work for the other and it’s all trial and
error. There are no sure fire ways that
are guaranteed to work for everyone. What
is the secret to weightloss? There is no
secret. It’s about eating healthy,
educating yourself on food and nutrition, knowing what works for you and
exercise.
I know that some may think that it’s easy for me to say this because I’ve
lost 25 kgs so what would I know about eating well and exercising and putting
on weight or losing only a few hundread grams or nothing at all. Well, I can tell you that so far I have had
all three of those things happen to me and I know how frustrating it is. Although it may seem to, weightloss does not
come easy to me and I have to fight EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Every day I make the choice to be healthy, I make the choice to not eat
the foods that will make me and my body feel worse, I make the choice not to
give up. I’m far from perfect and I too
have bad days where I am not motivated and I have cravings too but I try as
much as I can to stay positive and learn from my mistakes. I know that one bad day does not destroy all
the other good days or the future.
I have been on Lite n’ Easy for years.
I’ve lost 10 kgs before and put it all back on. Why is this time different? Because this time I am determined, this time
I want it more than anything and this time I’m doing it for life. I want to be healthier not just thinner. I don’t just see it as a “diet”, I see it as
the way I want to live the rest of my life.
I’m enjoying myself now and I don’t mind how long it takes.
What changed? Before I started I
got really sick and an MRI scan revealed I had Chiari 1 Malformation (misshaped
skull, forces part of my brain into my spine) that can cause migraines,
dizziness, vertigo, nausea along with a whole list of nasty symptoms. I was also told that I had Benign
Intracranial Hypertension (excess fluid around the brain) that causes headache,
nausea and vomiting and if left untreated can cause vision loss. I was also told that to treat these I needed
surgery, invasive surgery which it’s not always successful and it’s not a high
success rate.
It hit me like a ton of bricks and I became depressed. For a whole year I let it control my life and
I did nothing. I never wanted to leave
the house and I didn’t walk very much and I wasn’t active. I put on a lot of weight, the shortest walk
would leave me out of breath, when I was sick (which is quite frequently) I ate
comfort food to make me feel better (it didn’t in the long run). Even my feet started swelling up because I
wasn’t active enough, from all the salty foods and lack of hydration. I’d seen several doctors, tried several
medications and nothing worked. I did
have one suggest that weightloss may help my symptoms but it still wasn’t
enough to motivate me. I then went to
see a doctor who monitored my blood pressure and put me on high blood pressure
medication and said that even losing 6kgs would help my symptoms. She talked to me about having surgeries to
make me lose weight. I went home and
researched those surgeries, it scared the hell out of me and all of them said
that you still needed to eat healthy and exercise.
That was it. I was in my early
30’s and on high blood pressure medication and my weight had gotten so bad that
doctors were now talking to me about surgery for it. This was all just before Christmas, the worst
time to try to lose weight, so that day I made a promise to myself that after
Christmas I was going to try. Try my
hardest to eat healthy and exercise and see what I could do by myself. Prove to myself and the doctors, that I could
do this if I really tried because I didn’t want to put myself or my body through
surgery, I wanted to do it for myself.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, there is nothing wrong with having
surgery to reduce weightloss but I decided that it just wasn’t for me. After Christmas I started this blog and
publishing my post (here), with my worst overweight photo, for the whole world
to see and it was one of the scariest things I had ever done but it’s also one of
the best things I have ever done.
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| Quote from: www.thedailyquotes.com |
So what motivates me? My health.
I’m off the high blood pressure medication and a neurologist said that I
have reversed the Benign Intracranial Hypertension by losing weight. I’m still as sick as I was when I started and
I still get all the symptoms but I still have a long way to go and I’m not
giving up anytime soon. You have to find
what motivates you and you have to use that as your strength but also identify your weaknesses and learn from them. I look at how far I’ve come in seven months
and it just motivates me even more. Not
only has my physical appearance changed but I’ve changed as a person too. I’m no longer depressed and I’m so much more
positive. I never want to go back to the
way I was “living” or think those negative, soul destroying thoughts
again. I feel so much happier, healthier
and I know that is only going to increase as my weight decreases. This is what motivates me and keeps me going.
What motivates you?
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