What was different before.

It was eight years ago that I was on my first part of my first weight loss journey. I had struggled for years with my weight, but for the first time I started actually seeing results. I had just come off 10 months of my back being out and barely able to walk, and I knew with me being point where I could move with limited pain, that it was time to start being serious. My first 30 days I lost 30 LBS, my body was feeling much better. Over the course of 10 months I continued dropping weight until I had gotten down to 197 LBS. But I was in my twenties then, things were different.

So that brings us to now. Over the past couple of years, I have tried to restart my weight loss journey, but keep hitting roadblocks. The first road block came when my uncle had passed away. I had to come off of my workout schedule to attend the funeral and slowly started losing motivation. When I was able to start back up, my back went out again, causing me unbearable pain for months. After that got resolved, I moved. When I moved I thought that everything was going to change, that I was going to work out all the time and get back to where I was. But workouts were few and far between, and then my back went out again.

So I have been thinking recently why am I hitting so many hiccups in this weight loss journey? What is different now than back the first time? I know I'm older, and with age weight loss becomes for difficult, but I should still be losing some. Sure, my back is still bothering me, but that isn't stopping me much from doing light cardio and workouts. I've even been in the apartment fitness center a couple of times a week. But my halt in weight loss and motivation, I believe is from one thing. Distractions.

When I first embarked on initial weight loss in 2010, I had zero distractions. Sure, I had to have a job and work, but that job was a part time job and I had a ton of time to workout and prepare food every day. I also wasn't dating or trying to date, and I stopped hanging out with friends. I had zero distractions in my life. I was selfish, I did everything for myself. My food was for me, my choices were for me, I worked out every single day. Now my life seems full of distractions. While I am single, I have been trying to date more, I am trying to be more social, I work a full time job that has a much higher stress level, and when I come home from work I turn on the TV and get lost in YouTube.

Distractions are part of life, but I need to work on minimizing them as much as possible. I am getting older, and while some will say 36 isn't old, my body doesn't agree. I need to make choices for food for me. I need to not binge when there is food that I really want. I need to make healthy habits into permanent habits. It's time to put the distractions that I can control out of the my sight, and focus one me. Only with this focus, can I truly change.

Taking Ownership

How many times in your life have you made an excuse as to why you can't do something? Or putting the blame on someone or something else? Maybe this is at home, work or school. It's easy to do, I mean we all have things come up or get busy, or maybe don't even want to face the consequences of our decisions.

Honestly, taking ownership of something that you did or didn't do is difficult and nerve racking. But if you want to grow in your personal life and professional life, you have to learn to take ownership. But what is taking ownership? Let's think back to when you were just a child. Maybe when mom or dad wasn't watching you, you knocked a lamp off of the table. What did you do? How did your parents react? I don't want to assume anything, but I can bet your answer to your parents was "I didn't do it", or "it was the cat/dog".  We have all done it. You are there, there is a reaction to what you did, and you go into panic mode or you just don't want to get into trouble, so you blame someone or something else. I get it, who wants to get yelled at or disciplined. But what would have happened if you would have taken ownership of the situation? You will never know. Would you have been yelled at? Maybe, but maybe it would have been a learning experience for you.

How about another example. You are working your day to day job. You work requires you to juggle multiple tasks throughout your day. Things are getting crazy busy, maybe your team is short handed, so the burden has fallen on you and other team members. Now some of your normal job duties are starting to suffer because maybe time management isn't quite an area that you excel at. When you are approached about it, instead of telling your boss that you know that it has been suffering and you will work on it, you just say "well I just don't have time". What would have happened if you had taken ownership? Would you have been written up? Unlikely. Most likely your boss would work with you or make suggestions on how to improve your time management.

But let's take this into your fitness journey. So many people when they are on their journey, starting or have ended it and lost their way do not take ownership when they mess up. Maybe you start, and something comes up just one day. You miss one workout, and don't workout again until you decide to start over. Why did you stop in the first place? I often hear "well something came up". Yeah, something came up on a single day, that didn't stop you from working out the day after or eating healthy. What about the time issue? I have heard this so much, "I don't have time" but you have time for your shows? When you are on a journey, you have to take ownership for everything that happens. You make time, you get back on after a rough day or a day off due to whatever. Let's use me for an example. I went from 336 LBS down to 197 LBS in just 10 months. Things were pretty great. Then I started gaining the weight back and by August 2016 I was back to 326 LBS. Now I wanted to use every excuse in the book, from I was in a relationship for a time, I was comfortable with my life, I needed it for body building and the list goes on. It wasn't until August 2016 that I took ownership of what happened for me to get back where I was. I had gotten lazy, I didn't care as much any more. I wasn't watching my diet. Sure I was meal prepping, but I was over eating and way over snacking. But when I took ownership, I was able to start that ball rolling to change.

When you take ownership, you are empowering yourself to make changes. So think about that next time you are given the option to blame something/someone or to take ownership of the situation.