I'm a single mother with a 13 year old son. I looked at previous pictures of myself and saw what I looked like now. By handling 2 jobs, master’s program in school and a 13 year old son, my weight slowly crept up from 140 to now 175 over the years. Although I'm 5'8 and my friends claim that I look better with the weight on, I'm not happy with my personal self-image. I'm not looking to be someone with an eating disorder; however, I do want to be healthier. I realize that I carry my weight mostly in my stomach. I've realized how my strength has weakened over the years. I've always loved running and used to do so. But after surviving 2 car accidents, one of which had me in physical therapy for over 6 months, my activity level has diminished. So I started working out at a gym close to my job in January. I stayed consistent until I started seeing the scale numbers creep up. I became frustrated for the lack of visual progress. With that discouragement lingering, my motivation to workout diminished. Then I realized it's probably because how I'm working out. I signed up with a personal trainer and quickly realized that it's a very expensive ($1500- for 6 session a month for 12 months) endeavor. I found myself working more just to be able to pay for them. Now that I think about it, that's pretty counteractive. Again, I'm feeling discouraged because I'm not able to make it into the gym. I was determined that I wanted a change, and started reading this book "Thinner, leaner, stronger" by Mike Matthews. I realized that my endeavor is "transformation". I want to lose weight and gain muscle, which means ignoring the scale and watching the measuring tape. I learned about "clean eating" and how to use myfitnesspal to my benefit to help me watch not only my caloric intake but also my sugar and sodium. I learned how much in grams I should eat in protein, carbs, and how much sugar and sodium I'm allowed and the importance of the proper about of hydration. In that book, he mentioned this site and that's how I navigated to here. Here, I continued to learn more about nutrition and found workout plans that can help me transform.
"Transform"!!! That word is such a powerful word. With that epiphany, I realized that's what I want to do as a lifestyle change. Transform my mentality, body, spirit; with that, my world will transform to something greater as will those around me. They will either gravitate to my new directional pull for improvement or be carried away by the rift currents of opposition.
I'm excited for today, because:
- the first step to change is the acknowledgement of the necessity for one.
- The second step is accepting the challenge to change.
- The third step is creating a vision of what the end result of positive change would look like.
- The fourth step is listing your goals you want to accomplish with this change.
- The fifth step is to create a plan to get started and maintain the course to succeed.
- The sixth step is to prepare to get started.
Preparation is the key to success or the lack thereof is the tool for one's downfall.
- The seventh step is to start. Nothing can be achieve if you stay stagnate.
- The eighth step is to congratulate yourself on the small accomplishments as you go to keep that motivation going.
- The ninth step is to PUSH!
Push, because life is full of mountains and valleys. The valleys are easy but you can get stuck there because they are low and consistent with meager things to suffice, because of the limited perspective view that you are able to attain. The mountains are optimal because of the height; you are able to see the vast majestic world (opportunities) to be achieved. But mountains are treacherous at times, resistant, opposing, hard to climb and sometimes seem outright impossible to overcome. However, your constant tenacious spirit and drive, pushes you to continue in which you develop strength in places you used to be weak. In areas that were injured in the climb, the healing process makes those areas more stronger than ever and it would take much more of a stronger beating for it to be injured as badly again. You develop definition, strength, confidence, maturity, wisdom, and a strong sense of peace through your battle to the top. All of which, you don't notice until you reach the top or get through climbing another mountain and realize that your speed increased, energy increased, injuries decreased, instinctual insight magnified. It is as the top of the mountain you're able to see where you came from (your accomplishments), where you are (your place in your progressive transformation timeline), and what you have yet to achieve (your finish line).
- The tenth step is to Celebrate! You've reached the end. But after doing so, it's now to re-evaluate your next goals. Just because you finished this race, doesn't mean that there aren't others you should run. Don't allow yourself to indulge in the celebration of the completion of this task too long. Or you'll find that you've slipped back into a place of a higher elevated complacency. Complacency is dangerous. It's there where you'll begin to slowly lose your gains, and before you know it you're right back where you started. You're in a valley. You just traded the view of one valley for another.
Keep moving and you'll be great, achieving great things! Remember your choice to do this will inspire others to do it too. It will encourage them, to start.

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