Hey Readers,
I’d like to take the first couple sentences to show my appreciation for everyone visiting or even supporting my movement for “MotivatioNel Works.” Understand, every blog I publish is intended to “creatively inspire” you!
As my love for motivation continues to grow, I’ve realized how my weight loss played a major role in my motivational awakening. Over the past couple months; I’ve had plenty of people ask me for “The Secret” to dropping over 120 pounds alongside my diet plan attached with it.
As the hopeful helper I’ve always aimed to be. I claimed I would but then went back to paying attention solely to my goal. I would forget about jotting down what I ate everyday, what I stayed away from and how many times I worked out a week. As the email list piled up of friends and family asking for the info. I eventually would see them and feel totally embarrassed, having still not sent the email.
Well…
I then decided to begin blogging. Thinking of what to write for my next couple blogs. I sat at my desk blankly looking at my computer screen, a small digital note laid on top of my desktop reading, “Send Your Diet Plan!”
At that moment it dawned on me, why not write my next blog about “The Secret”. Everything I would write about in this new blog would be everything I did to lose weight alongside my diet plan.
So here it is,
My weight loss story alongside my diet plan weaved into a blog post. I hope this brings you as much enlightenment as it brought me in my journey.
The mental method that I will explain is how I’ve learned to overcome many obstacles over the years from late night cravings. To not wanting to wake up after a full nights rest. My method went past cleaning up my diet and acquiring a workout regimen. It went further than casual runs every morning and also making it’s way through strength training, 5k’s, obstacle courses, and even hikes.
In order to begin…
I would first like for you to focus on mental change more than physical. What I mean is, change your thought process behind losing weight. Forget about the mirror, forget about who would like you more, forget about the cool activities you can do, and most importantly forget about the “Hot Bod!”
That’s not the focus here.
In order to acquire the vision that can set you in the right direction, we must first ask a few questions to understand the mind projecting it.
–How do you feel about your physical-self right now?
–What is an embarrassing issue you constantly have trouble with?
–When you think of happiness, what comes to mind?
As you write/type/think your answers out, you can begin to understand a little more about your current starting point. Personally, I am an over achiever so I wrote it down and taped them to my fridge.
My Starting Point:
“- I felt extremely uncomfortable and frustrated.
– Everything that I wore showed how overweight I was and what I did required many breaks.
– My happiness is to live worry free and truly feel like I’m doing my best.”
Those 3 questions helped strengthen my vision. With this I was able to identify my weak state of mind, my painful moments and where I truly want to be. Weight loss will not bring you happiness like money will not solve your problems. The key is to find out what brings you pain and makes you weak. Use these two and grow from it like a rose grows from concrete displaying its true strength.
It’s important to find happiness within your new lifestyle because creating a getaway from your diet (cheat days, meals, or days off) means that you keep your happiness tucked away with your past. As humans, we always link ourselves back to what makes us happy no matter where we are. So packing away your painful past with happiness means that you will always take yourself back to your same past.
Lets keep our happiness with our new lifestyle and try to be as real with our selves as humanly possible. I’ve found myself more disciplined with my lifestyle as I slowly made alterations to my daily planner and diet over time.
This method helped me pick up the habit of becoming “comfortable being uncomfortable.”
Here’s My Story…
I started my workout regimen three years ago at a Charter Fitness close to work. I hit the gym either before or after my shift as much as possible, going at least 3-5 times a week. I was intensely intrigued by strength training, so I pushed for big muscles and worked eagerly to feel the noticeable power.
Without changing my diet,
I began to drop weight only from working out. My starting weight was 286lbs. My workout routine involved full on strength training and ending with a little cardio (jog for 10 mins or stairs for 5 mins). This caused my weight to dwindle down by almost 10lbs a month. By the third month, I was cruising past the 250’s like an irrelevant highway exit.
Physically, I started to feel energetic; my mind became hungry for success and my vision had strengthened significantly.
I began to do research on effective dieting and workout routines. As I cringed through the diet journals (mostly because I’m picky with eating), I would always end up watching motivational videos to get me pumped. I had also read a book called “The Hero,” which talked about how to live your dream and how to believe in your journey whole-heartedly with a very powerful idea backing it called, “Law of Attraction.” All of this began to give great insight.
However, after months of weight loss from strength training, a time came where I peaked at 220lbs. I couldn’t lose any more weight. I had just gotten back from Puerto Rico where my father and I had visited family we had not seen in awhile. I also begun to work at a different barbershop upon my return from vacation. I began to join in on the barber’s lunch outings eating pizza, wings, or tacos; in due time I began to see an increase in my weight even though I would still workout. I had gone up to 235lbs and it had only been a couple months. I even started skipping trips to the gym because of the lack of motivation I had.
In December of 2015, my father had a massive stroke, which caused severe nerve and brain damage. As I lay beside my father on the hospital bed the second day being there, he cried out looking for help and I could only sit in torment tending to him helplessly. I had grew so angry with myself for letting this happen, I was frustrated at the fact that it happened, and I had also become fearful for not knowing any better.
The next couple week’s my visits at the hospital were a painful blur. I felt awful, emotionally unstable, and broken to say the least. One of my cousins came back from Puerto Rico a short while before and showed up for emotional support for my father.
She had not only lost a good amount of weight but also had a glow to her skin that displayed how healthy she had become.
As we all gave compliments and inquired how she managed to do it, her response was for us to watch a documentary called “Forks Over Knives.” The documentary explained how utilizing the plant-based diet could help reverse severe chronic illnesses and the importance your diet plays.
As I watched in amazement, I could only think of how this diet could’ve prevented this whole situation with my pops. After the film, I talked it over with my sister and we decided to give the diet a try. As we cleared out our refrigerators, pantries, and cabinets, our focus began to narrow itself on exactly what we wanted.
We no longer wanted to do it for weight loss or for a “hot bod,” but more importantly for our health and to guarantee ourselves a better future. This gave our journey a purpose and was used for support like my family gave my father.
Within the first month, I became mentally empowered. I had begun to speak it into existence with constantly engaging myself in conversations with others about health and dieting. I began reading books about it, educating myself. Most importantly, acting upon these thoughts and making adjustments to keep myself moving forward into this new healthy lifestyle. I was ready for a change.
The next day I stocked my fridge with…
Apples, bananas, grapes, raisins, peanut butter, broccoli, Greek yogurt and lettuce. I made alterations like regular milk to almond milk, regular cheese to cheese with no lactose, white bread to wheat bread, juice and soda became only water, and fries became cut up potatoes.
I also made sure I had no meat in my kitchen!
***A brand named “Morningstar,” also made life easier with the substitution for meat. Their brand has meatless premade items(contains soy) like veggie nuggets, veggies burgers, veggie buffalo wings, veggie buffalo patties, and even veggie corndogs!
Most importantly I focused on what nutritional value my food held rather than what kind of food I was eating.
After the first month, my weight dropped back down to 220lbs! I started to feel a good rush of energy, motivation, and clarity. I found myself not only going to the gym 5 days a week but also working out twice a day or even whenever I was sitting around. I began to make my free time, a time to work out because of the focus I had acquired to becoming healthy.
Let’s Be Real!
Every now and then I’d have a cheat meal but it wasn’t becoming a necessity or a constant thought through out the month. I would really only cheat if I stumbled upon an opportunity to eat something that was worth slowing me down or would give me the motivation to go twice as hard with working out that same day!
By February, I had broken out of the 200’s and was feeling better than ever. My mind had been so engulfed by the physical challenges I pushed myself to do that it seemed that eating anything that was going to slow me down, drew me away from it. The idea of my father enduring these conditions mostly because of the way his diet had been showed me that dieting can also play that same role in helping you!
As dieting became a major role in my life. I hadn’t really paid much attention to the scale since I had felt better every passing day. It wasn’t until late April, out of curiosity I stepped on the scale and it read 185lbs.
I had lost over a hundred pounds from when I first started!
The feeling was euphoric; it felt better than anything I had ever endured before. I had accomplished something that not only took years of focus, but also that I did it for the bettering of my future. I had become so obsessed with my goal that I did not spend time to think about anything else (which was why I never got to the diet plan emails).
Much has manifested from this motivational awakening like the company MotivatioNel Works I have put together. The idea of this media company is to creatively inspire; however not only does it end up inspiring the audience, but the creators as well.
From spring to currently, my weight sits at 165lbs. The consistent progress I provide myself will be everlasting because my focus for good health will be needed for the rest of my life.
I may not spend as much time as I would like to inside a gym, but making sure I give myself at least an hour or two a day is fine by me. My diet still includes everything I mentioned above alongside the cheat meals, but my focus for a better self has become stronger than ever. I have the notion that everything can be conquered if you put in consistent hard work (even if its for an hour a day), great focus, and that you learn to identify your pain and weaknesses to grow from them.
Continue to remind yourself what currently makes you embarrassed, what troubles you, and most importantly what will make you happy. Continue to write these things down, or speak these things out loud and post them up where they’re visible. Learn to not only conquer your fears but also expose them for what they really are, just platforms that play as growing points.
This is why one must “Add Value,” because I want you to make pain and weakness count for something. Give them their worth because without darkness; we would never appreciate light.
Thank you for reading.
