Just Get Your Foot in the Door, the Rest of Your Body will Follow

To be brutally honest I have been struggling to start my journey for over 2 years now. I have not yet succeed but it isn't because I do not want it as most people say. But more so because I am trying to change to many things that I have become used to at the same time. For instance, I have got so used to just going to a fast joint, like Arby's or McDonald's, instead of cooking meals at home because it is easier. To this day, it is still easier but is it better? No. The easy things in life are not going to get you where you need to be. I am realizing this now and it is going to take a little bit of time to get where I need to be in order to start losing. It is not going to be easy, I need to keep telling myself that. It is also not going to happen over night. It is going to take time, hard work and will power; all of which if you stay focused will help you get to where you want to be.

Let me start by saying that I never been big, until now. I am 24 years old and I am at the biggest I have ever been and I do not wish to be this big ever again. It isn't that I find big people horrible, or disgusting. It is the fact that I do not recognize myself in the mirror. This is why I want to lose weight. Not to fit in, not because society is telling me that is how I am supposed to look or any other reason people will throw at me. I am doing it for me. I am doing it because I felt good when I was at a healthy weight.

Up until I was 18 years old I was skinny, healthy, athletic and toned. I then got into a serious relationship, started a job and was a full time college student. My time was spent doing homework, working or spending time with my amazing boyfriend. He quickly turned into my fiancee and I got... comfortable. Since I was working and getting home late, I started to just pick up food on my way home from work to avoid having to cook a meal at 10 o'clock in the evening. It was easy, and it became a habit. I slowly started to put on weight and having to buy bigger clothes. After a while, my family started telling me that they were sad to see me putting on so much weight. You would think that would have been a wake up call. But it wasn't. I didn't change. See, I was used to eating those kinds of foods and being able to keep the weight off because I was active. After high school, I stopped doing a lot of the activities that I did that was keeping the weight off but I didn't stop the eating.

Now, years later I am trying to change all of this. I am trying to add in all of the activities, stop the over eating, the eating out, drinking soda and so on and so on. You get the picture, I am trying to do a whole 180 all at once. And I keep failing. Failing adds to the pressure of people telling me that I am not able to do this. I know I can do it, I just need to take it slow. I'm not going anywhere.

Why do I keep failing? There are so many reasons. I keep failing because if I miss a workout, I beat myself up about it. When the scale doesn't move or it goes up even though I have been behaving, I get discouraged. Once I start beating myself up and I get discouraged, I throw in the towel and it is hard to pick it back up.

In September to October 2012, I lost 10 pounds and was down in the 170's. I was doing good. I got into the hang of things, I started seeing results but then I stopped because I didn't want to have to get my wedding dress refitted so close to my wedding. I vowed to start back up right after the wedding. I tried, but it didn't work and I ended up gaining back those 10 pounds; plus, it brought along some friends.

I no longer feel comfortable in my body no matter what kind of clothes I am wearing. I try to avoid dresses, shorts and bathing suits at all costs. Jeans are starting to be out of the question as well. I love being able to wear dresses out to dinner, shorts in the summer and I love to swim which means I love to wear bathing suits. And jeans, well they are on of my favorite things to wear. But with the added weight, I'd rather pull on a pair of sweat pants than them. This is not how I want to live my life. The other thing... heels. It is so much harder to walk in heels when you have extra weight to carry around. At this point, I have stopped wearing all of my heels because I feel like they are just going to SNAP in half because of my weight.

I am not an expert and by no means am I going to tell you what will work for you, but by writing this blog I am hoping that it will help you find what works for you and shows you that with a little bit of work, help and time you will get to where you want to be.

Together, let’s put one foot in the door and let our bodies follow. Let's take one day at a time and let them all add up.