Finally Getting Fit

You’ve looked at yourself in the mirror. You’ve twisted and turned. You’ve thought about what you’re eating and how you can change it. You’ve even thought about joining the local gym.

You are one of the millions of people changing their lives to get healthier.

Having decided to do this, you would think it would be easy to get your friends and family to support your decision. You would think they would be more than happy to help you on your way to becoming a healthier person.

Not always.

Believe it or not, once you have decided to start on your weight loss journey, you might find your spouse complaining about how you won’t be cuddly anymore or your friends saying that, “You don’t need to do that. You look fine.”

When it comes to getting fit, you can’t be in denial about your weight. You shouldn’t let anyone else be in denial about it either.

What can you do when the people whose support you need the most aren’t exactly supportive of your journey to become healthy?

You might need to sit some down and let them know what their lack of support is doing to you. Tell them why you want to lose weight, what prompted you to start, and what your goals are.

You can also find support elsewhere. Start talking to other people about your weight loss plans and maybe those people will start talking to the people who aren’t supporting you.

If all else fails, just don’t talk to them about it. Don’t share meal times with them if you can avoid it and don’t talk about getting healthier. Some people just don’t like people they know losing weight because it’s a threat to them on some level.

That’s their problem to deal with. You have to focus on you and your health.

Having the option of coffee (caffeine), chai (caffeine), or tea (wholesome goodness of grossness) to drink this afternoon while working my arse off to cover blog posts while my husband and I are away on vacation, I immediately disregarded coffee. I have yet to figure out how to operate our new coffee maker.

Between chai and tea, my choice would usually be chai. So you can imagine my surprise when I found myself reaching for the sample of tea I received in the mail last week. I paused to consider a chai once more, but I yawned and figured that tea of any kind would probably be better for me.

Now that’s what I call living the lifestyle.

I didn’t think about how the caffeine/sugar in chai would probably be bad for me and my diet and how I would have to watch what I ate for sugar content for the rest of the day. No, I just figured tea would be better for me.

Too often I, and many others, forget that weight loss – true weight loss – isn’t about the temporary fix. It’s not all about doing whatever it takes to get to that ideal weight regardless of the consequences. Those sorts of diets and actions will get you nowhere but gaining back all your weight and then some after the goal is achieved.

That is, if it is achieved at all.

Given that this is something you will ideally be doing for the rest of your life, it’s good to celebrate the small changes you make. The automatic habits you develop when it comes to your health.

Celebrate because you’re doing one of the hardest things out there – changing your life.

No, I’m not talking about weight loss success stories, unfortunately. However, I have found a video you might have a good chuckle at because it sounds oh so familiar even for how it’s taken to extreme levels.

Okay, so maybe I’m a bit of a hypocrite for posting this given I am taking weight loss supplements, but I figured that if I can get a laugh out of this video, other people can as well.

Haven’t we all heard it thousands of times? Try this! You’ll lose weight instantly. The pounds will melt off. It’s the latest and greatest diet out there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Something I read today really resounded to me because it makes so much sense. As we all know, 99 percent of these things plain don’t work. Or they don’t work in the long term if you are one of the lucky few to see some kind of result.

Why? To keep us spending money!

Just like any other companies, they’re all out to make a dollar. So why give people something that works when you can make a lot more money by keeping people coming back?

This is more of a ramble than a rant, but I am a bit peeved at all this. These companies know exactly what they are doing because it has worked for so many companies before. People are so addicted to the quick fix that the psychology of obesity simply doesn’t come into play.

Now that’s a thought – if a company started a psychological program, maybe more of us would get real help.

What do you think? Are you sick of all the ads or don’t you mind them? Do you wish there was more focus on the psychology of obesity?

As per usual, easier said than done.

It’s easy enough to say that you should lose weight for you. To live longer, to look better, to feel better about yourself. But more often than not, it’s difficult to start a diet with ‘for me’ in mind.

Why? Because many overweight people just don’t care that much about themselves.

Unlike what a lot of the skinnier population seems to think, being overweight is not always just a matter of “I’m a glutton”. There are mental, emotional, and psychological components all adding up to a lack of not caring about the value of one’s own life.

There are many reasons for ‘do it for you’ not being quite enough to get you busting to go to the gym.

So what can you do if ‘do it for you’ just doesn’t cut it?

Try making a list of the people closest to you. (Even if they don’t exist. My future daughter, not even conceived yet, has been a big motivator for me in the past.) You can use that as a list of motivators.

Not really close to many people? I know how you feel. The next step is to make a list of reasons you want to lose the weight. Even things like the little black dress/suit of your dreams.

It’s entirely possible that you’ll find you have lists of things that aren’t quite the ‘bottom line’ to get you to start changing your life. However, if you wait for motivation, it’s possible that you’ll never lose weight.

Sometimes it’s a matter of doing it and the motivation will come.

Speaking of hitting rock bottom, I was reminded of something Richelo Killian said on my old blog that I think needs to be noted here.

“You don’t have to reach rock bottom to get the kick up the backside to reach your goals. You just have to get in the mindset of someone that has hit rock bottom.”

Very, very true.

Long before I decided to do all this, I wondered what my rock bottom would be. What it would be and when I would get there. I was worried that it would come when I was 300 pounds or more and then I’d have that much more weight to lose.

The thing is, Richelo is right - you don’t have to hit your actual rock bottom. You need to decide you’ve hit rock bottom and go from there.

One day when my husband and I were walking home from the mall, I noticed I began feeling uncomfortable when I was walking. Then I realized I had back fat, which I had never had before. I stopped, turned to my husband, and told him, “I think I’m reaching rock bottom. I have back fat. I can’t believe I have back fat.”

I was a bit upset at noticing it, but I wasn’t upset enough to really get into that rock bottom mindset. But then…

My husband and I were walking off and met up with our neighbors. We had some food for them (my husband and I try to not eat anything with a lot of numbers listed in the ingredients, which presents a problem when we win things), and they were eager to chat. The wife, who was eight months pregnant at the time, turned to me and asked if I had a lot of problems with vomiting (morning sickness).

I looked at her, confused, and said, “No.”

Awkward silence.

She hastily said something like she thought I was someone else, and my husband and I left soon after. Needless to say, I was a bit upset about it.

Now, I could have drowned my sorrows in the box of chocolates the neighbors left outside our door as a thank-you for the food, but as my husband and I were walking, I decided that was my rock bottom. I decided I wouldn’t take it anymore. I could take it longer, certainly, but I wouldn’t.

I was going to lose weight.

I want to make it known that I could have just as easily ate my sorrows away or ignored the comment, but I chose the other way instead.

I decided on my rock bottom. I didn’t let it decide on me.

My husband and I were walking home last night and talked about hitting rock bottom.

It’s long been touted that only when you hit rock bottom – when you are completely broken and bruised – only then can you truly turn your life around. It’s when religious people have seen the light, people have lost weight, stopping drinking, and whatever else. Ah, rock bottom, that glorious (?) state of mind.

But is that really true? Do you have to hit rock bottom to change your life?

No. No, no, no and again, no.

The thing about hitting rock bottom is that you can decide what your ‘rock bottom’ is if you need that label to start changing your life. But if you don’t need the label, good on you. You’re fine if you do, but you also have to realize that you might be using “I haven’t hit rock bottom yet” to keep yourself from starting on your weight loss journey.

When I decided to renew my weight loss efforts this year, it wasn’t because something had happened to break me apart. I was fine. Overweight, with issues, but I could have still gone a long way before hitting that metaphorical wall.

I decided on the change. I decided the new year was a fine time to start and that was that.

If you want to take some control in your life, don’t let rock bottom choose you. Make today your rock bottom. Choose today that you are too important to keep living as is and renew/start on your weight loss journey.

We’re all in this together.

I was getting dressed to go out yesterday - something I actually do with a bit of pleasure now - and I stood in front of the mirror for a bit to look at myself. My pants are a little loose - just enough for me to notice. The shirt I was wearing was no longer a little too tight.

I thought for a while that I don’t look horribly overweight. I wondered what I would have looked like had I kept on gaining weight, which was easy for me to imagine because I know where my weight goes when I gain.

I didn’t like that track of thinking, so I tried to imagine what I’ll look like when I lose weight by pulling my shirt tight, running my hands down my sides to try to accentuate my curves, and even poking and prodding at my face a bit to see what changes might happen there as the weight goes.

It was a good experience for me, and I found myself smiling. I then realized what one of my problems in the past was.

I had always avoided mirrors for the most part because I didn’t like myself or the way I looked. Since coming to live with my husband and him showing me he loves me no matter what, I began liking myself a bit more. If someone could love me as much as he does, then there must be something worth loving.

It’s been a long road to learn to like myself, a road I’m still on, but I know that’s an element in getting healthy that I had been missing.

If you love someone, you’re more than willing to help them and get the best for them. If you don’t like someone, you’re far less inclined to do anything to better his/her live.

Do you see what I’m getting at?

One of the reasons I was never motivated to lose weight before is because I never liked myself all that much so I never really had a vested interest in my own good. Diet and exercise was torture because it was like bringing flowers and nice things to someone I really didn’t like every day.

So if you’re having a hard time getting motivated to start losing weight, try to consider it might be because you’re not particularly interested in you as a person or you might not like yourself all that much to keep going with a weight loss plan.

AKA: Children in China are Starving

I think it’s Africa these days, but I’m old enough to at least been on the end of the starving children in China statement.

Sometimes weight is just weight. Someone gets a desk job and puts a few pounds on. But for the people who are overweight or obese and have been for years, if not most of their life, there is usually a lot more to it than just weight.

That’s why in this blog, I want to address some of the other things besides your desk job which can lead to being overweight. I have a lot of personal causes, but I want to move beyond the scope of my personal weight loss and issues to issues many people might have.

Getting back to the above, I’m willing to be you heard something like the above when you were young. Either that or you were mature enough and in a family situation where you knew you should eat as much as you can right now because you don’t know when the next meal is coming.

There is yet another alternative in this group, and that is you heard a lot of:

Finish your dinner or no dessert!

You have to finish your plate before you can go out and play.

Or,

You finished your entire plate! What a good boy/girl!

Now picture me sighing and shaking my head.

I didn’t realize this was such a big issue until I came here to Australia. My husband and I would eat either out or in, it didn’t matter and I’d reach a point in the meal when it would just be uncomfortable to finish the rest of the meal. Eventually my husband kept telling me again and again that it was okay to not finish the meal.

It may seem the simplest thing in the world to simply stop eating when you’re full, but it’s not. At home, I would feel guilty if my husband cooked and I didn’t finish. I felt not only like I was letting good food go to waste but that I was somehow insulting him and his hard work by not finishing. When we were out, I wasn’t worried about insulting anyone, but I still felt guilt when I pushed a plate or bowl with food still in it away and said, “I’m finished.”

This is a case of easier said than done if you have hang-ups about food. It took me months to be able to be reasonably comfortable saying I’m finished when I truly was finished. It’s truly a habit you have to teach yourself. Learning it, however, is one of the factors that kept me around the 260 mark (my highest weight) instead of going any higher.

If you have troubles with this (when you’re at home, at least), take your leftovers and go through the act of making them leftovers. Even if you’d never really eat the leftover amount later, you’re still putting it away in the fridge and not into the wastebasket.

You won’t get the guilt from wasting it or insulting anyone, and you’re still teaching yourself to say your finished when you are really finished, not when your mind/society/your parents say you’re finished eating.

Remember: You should not be deriving a sense of accomplishment from finishing your plate.