Motivation

Whether you are at the gym, running a mile, trying to lose weight, or trying to improve your diet, everything towards better requires motivation, and usually, a lot!

Everyone has something that drives them forward, a lot of times it takes until we are truly driven towards something so exponential in order to find it.  I've always been asked what my biggest motivation was, I really could never give a better one than "to lose weight and be skinny".  Once I lost the first 30lbs I realized this was plausible, even if many did not think it was.  As I've illustrated on my main page, I had some down times of weight loss and commitment, but I eventually got back on track. 

Now I see that all very differently.  My motivation today is still to lose weight and be skinny but I've added on more things that are more in grasp: 6-pack abs, sub 2:00 half marathon, sub 4:00 marathon, 2014 Pittsburgh triathlon, becoming a personal trainer/weight loss coach.  Some of these may sound completely out-of-range for me, but I promise I'm going to make it all happen and more! Everyone needs something to set stepping stones so-to-say so that they can see the progress being made.  As for motivation in trying to complete the marathon, once I hit a certain stage, there became this fact that I had to finish, I already bought shirts, I declared it on Facebook, etc, I commited to the world I would do it. It helps, it really does, the more people you have to let down, the less likely you are to fail!

To finish this post, lets talk about the anti-motivating people in our lives.  I won't try to single any one out, becasuse there are plenty of people that still drive me nuts and really annoy me with the things they do/say.  Some I have experience in the past, and some in the present.

1. "You don't need to lose any more weight" - really? Unless someone is skin and bones, no one has any right to say this to someone losing weight, it's incredibly annoying and discouraging

2. Surroundings - people at work, at home, or girl scouts trying to sell you cookies - these people can make it really hard to stay on track.  If you happen to be a co-worker of someone that's trying to lose weight or eat healthy, but say, "1 cookie won't kill you".  If we don't want to eat it, why the hell do you care so much? Is it because now you feel fat for eating one, yeah probably.

3. Doubters - even from day 1, I think even my mom has doubted I would ever come this far, as I think 90% of people that know me never would of thought I would go this far.  It's sad, really sad. Give people more credit. I lone myself from others for some reasons, this is one of them.  I pushed through this journey alone and I will continue to.  For anyone to try to take credit, would be interesting. Is it so hard to give people positive reinforcement? As I went through this long journey of rediscovering the new way to live, even though I plateaued at times with weight, I always reminded myself, no matter if I wasn't losing weight, I was doing the right thing everyday and therefore I am always going in the right direction and one day it will pay off.

This may of ended on the not so positive side of the topic, but sometimes you have to throw your feelings out there and sometimes you need to be blunt with people, and I am well known for that!