In this post I will share the things that got me started on my path to weight loss. What inspired me, what motivated me and what kept me committed.
The wake up call - Renne Williams, who was also known as a half ton mom. I came across her story on you tube and that video made a great impact on me. She was such a beautiful woman but she was an invalid because of her weight. It was easy to say that she suffered from a rare condition where the weight just keep increasing but a little research on her back ground showed that she started off with being over weight and somewhere she lost control of her diet.
She denied that she ate more than was required but there were reports that she would eat till her stomach hurt and would consume 8 burgers. She went through a gastric bypass surgery and died after the surgery at the age of 29. She was too young to die and no matter how I look at this story one thing never escaped my conscious and that is she got morbidly obese because of her eating habits.
Being trapped in your own body is a hell that only fat people are aware of.
When I saw the video I told myself that I would never let food control me and I will be in control of the food that I consume. This story marked the start of my weight loss journey.
You are what you eat - This is a TV series featured on BBC. I started following it on you tube. This series helped me analyze my own food habits.
In the series the dietician arranges on a table all the food consumed by a person in a week. People would start crying when they see the amount of junk on the table. It was very hard to believe that how much crap a person can eat in a week.
As an exercise I visualized everything that I ate in a week on a table and do you know how the table looked
1. 5 sandwiches with cheese.
2. Unaccounted amount of rice
3. 3 burgers with large french fries
4. Unaccounted amount of cold drinks and sweets.
5. 3-4 Nans plus the restaurants dishes.
6. 1-2 pizza
7. Unaccounted snack like potato chips, fried crisps
etc.
8. Pasta and 2 minutes noodles.
I used to eat out mostly during the week, grabbing a burger and french fries after work was a ritual followed by dinner at restaurant.
The list above is just a short version of what I used to eat back then and to be honest I never realized that my diet was so high in calories till I visualized it as a bulk.
Before I started with my weight loss I regularly watched the show and I was amazed how much crap can we as humans can really eat. This show made me analyze my own diet and as a first step to right diet I gave up eating outside food for a year and experienced the wonderful changes that came along.
Who can motivate you best - No one but yourself. You will have to find a way to keep yourself going. For me it was the desire to wear good clothes, clothes that I wanted to wear NOT the clothes that I wore just because they fitted me better. I was tired of going to plus size stores, I never liked the designs but still bought the clothes because that was the only size that fitted me best.
Down in dumps - If I tell you that you will feel motivated to loose weight each and every second of your weight loss journey then I am not being honest with you. At least twice in a week you will have demotivating bouts, where you will just hate your body, question why are you pushing yourself so much, hate the world, hate yourself for being fat and will feel angry and frustrated to exercise.
It used to happen to me as well and I always used to talk about it to my sister and my husband and as a tape recorder they used to tell me the same thing over and over again but that same thing used to uplift my spirits. Talking to people dear to you does help.
Sometimes, just going for a fresh air walk used to help as well. Down in the dumps days will be there and you will have to find your own way to step out of the mess.
What does it take to lose weight - A good pair of walking shoes, healthy diet and strict allotted time for yourself. An hour walk outside my house did the trick for me and I still follow the one hour 'ME' time, I give a damn for the world during this hour. Its dedicated to me and my body no one can share this time with me.
The Cup of Commitment - Being strict for one day and letting loose on the second day is not by any means commitment. I have never been committed in my efforts for weight loss and had always failed miserably.
This time around I told myself either I won't start BUT if I am starting it I will make sure to struggle till the end. This thought made me get out of my house for a daily walk.
There is always a small voice that whispers inside us, in most cases we choose to ignore the voice. Whenever I wanted to ditch my efforts towards weight loss this voice always whispered about my start and finish commitment and it kept me going.
There are no tricks to be committed to something, either you try to push yourself and adopt this virtue OR you can choose to fail over and over again. Choice is always in our hands.
There were times when I didn't even attempt to loose weight because I knew I was not committed and would fail all over again. The thing is you never know till you start. Don't give up without getting the real feel of the experience, just rejecting the thought because you think you have a meek willpower is not a good idea. Attempt weight loss no matter how low on willpower meter you rate yourself, like me you never know how much can you surprise your ownself. Those with the weakest willpower often come out as strongest.
Keeping the fire alive - Reading health articles, weighing myself weekly and recording the result and experimenting on different aspects of weight loss kept the fire alive for me.
You can achieve whatever you want but the first step of achieving is to have faith in yourself and believing in yourself. More often than we realize we have very little faith in our own capabilities.
Remember, there is only one person who can never ditch you and that is YOU YOURSELF. There is only one person who will stand by you always and that is YOU YOURSELF. Then why not give this person some credit, why not believe and have faith in this person. Why not give this person a fair chance by believing that she will win no matter what.
Its time to stop rating this person low, stop criticizing this person and stop telling this person that she cannot achieve what she desires.
Give yourself a chance by believing in yourself and you will be amazed by YOU YOURSELF.
