Self Motivation

I read a post by Barbara on Thursday about the struggles that come with adopting a healthy lifestyle, and whether those would ever go away. I had too much to say to just post a comment. It brought me back to the last time that I lost this weight. When I got into a 'normal' weight for the first time in my adult (and maybe even entire) life, everything felt different. I found that I was working out in ways that didn't require motivation. I was on a baseball team and a volleyball team. When I went out with friends we often went for a walk, or went to the batting cages or to a driving range. I took up golf. I chose my bicycle when I was going out - to work, to friend's houses, and I walked to a lot of places too. Around this time I actually took my car off the road because I realized that everywhere I went was within active transportation distance. My mantra was that everything was within walking distance, some places just took longer than others. I bought a pair of great hiking boots and kept this up in the winter, too. As long as you're dressed properly the snow is just another challenge.

In terms of eating healthy, I surprised myself by really embracing a healthy diet (diet as in the foods I chose, not some kind of weight loss strategy). I loved the way my body felt when I fueled it with good food like fruits and veggies, whole grains and lean proteins. That weighed down feeling that you get when you eat too much or too many processed foods? That didn't fit in well with my new lifestyle. I needed to be light on my feet so that I could run and jump and just move properly. The choices I made were no longer related to weight loss, but I recognized my body as a machine; and like any machine, the better you take care of it, the better it works.

Now, you may be wondering how I ended up 3 years later writing a weight loss blog. Well, as strong as all of those feelings were, and even though they resulted in me keeping the weight off at home, when the game changed I managed to forget my motivation. I moved away from my hometown. I moved in with someone who had very different eating habits from me. I went to school full time and worked three jobs. I found it hard to find time to work out, to make my own healthy meals on a really tight budget, and I didn't have the social connections to keep up the sports and active lifestyle that I had developed. They say it takes 8 weeks to form a habit. I think after 2 months of living a more sedentary and unhealthy lifestyle, that became habitual too. So now I'm on my way back, and because I've done this before, I am not starting from scratch. I have some skills that I can dust off and build on. And I am trying to learn how to adapt to the different situations that I am faced with, so that even when the game changes, I can still make healthy choices, and as time goes on those healthy choices are becoming the easier ones again.