Not giving up

This morning I ran. I ran 4 miles and I feel great! I met a friend at the gym and she helped keep me motivated to meet my goal. I told myself I was going to do 4 miles and I did it. I sucked it up and just did it.

Here's the thing with weight loss and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, it's a life long process. There is no end point, you can't just say I will get to this "point" and I can stop. You have to make the effort every single day for the rest of your life. You will have bad days/ week/ or even months. Hell you may have bad years.  I know I have. Life is going to get stressful, and if you are like me (or 90% of America) you will reach for that box of donuts, that bag of Cheetos, that bowl of candy, and you will pig out. You will eat to suppress because that is what your brain is trained to do. It has been hard work attempting to retrain my brain, and it's not a 100% process. Although I think people don't really like to see food as an addiction it is. It is because it stimulates the reward center in your brain, certain foods (carbs) even promote the production of serotonin in your brain which is one of your happy chemicals. Biologically sugar and bread and pasta make you happy! Trying to convince your brain after years of happy eating that really healthy foods will make you happier, really a run or a walk with a friend will make you happier is HARD and there are setbacks.

My problem lately (for the past 4 months) has been a lack of progress followed by a defeatist attitude and then a slow slide downhill into just giving up. Not seeing results made me feel like it wasn't worth it. The holiday food was just to hard to pass up, and then stress really kicked in and it all went to hell.

This is the cycle. You get motivated, you lose weight, you feel great, then you plateau and you start to slide backwards. Then eventually you get back up and do it all over again. Usually that "eventually" is after gaining back half or all of what you lost. This time I caught myself before I made a huge mistake.

The whole point of this blog for me was to document, to share, to help motivate, but also to be honest and real about the struggle. It is not easy, and sometimes it is not fun. Some days it doesn't even feel worth it. But I keep trying. I hope if you follow this blog you take it for what it is, a personal journey. I will have setbacks, I will fall off the "wagon." I will not always be inspiring. I will complain, and I may have weeks of disappointment. This is real life. I am not a personal trainer, or health expert, I am not a workout guru, or nutritionist, I am just a person who got tired of being fat and wanted to make a change. I struggle every single day with this even when I seem to be doing great.

I guess what I am trying to say is, it's ok to have bumps in the road, it's ok to struggle, it's ok to cry and piss and moan and its ok to eat shit sometimes. It's hard to stick to a goal with no end. I feel your pain and I know your struggle, I have been there, I am still there. Take it one day at a time, acknowledge the small victories. It's a long road ahead.