What is your why?

In order to achieve anything successful you need to have a why. You need to have a full proof reason as to why you are doing something. Whether it's losing weight, starting to run or even starting a business. You need to have your reasons set out and you need to believe in them. Or well this is what I have been told. My sister has been on a whole lot of courses for her work over the last year and she was speaking to me about how your mind won't allow you to succeed unless you have a reason as to why you are doing a certain thing. So basically she told me that I need to have a reason as to why I want to lose weight and maybe that because I haven't figured out my why is the reason why I am still at the weight I am at now.

So just like anyone else who would have been told this, I wrote a list of reasons why I wanted to lose weight. And this is basically how my list went:

• To be able to wear pretty clothes
• To be confident
• To look good
• To be happy
• To be comfortable
• To live

Now those items on my list are pretty normal I would say, they something nearly everyone strives for and I thought that they were perfect but everything changed for me today. It was as if something clicked in my mind and it's because I heard something today, I heard something that has changed my perspective completely. And what I heard is this:

When you are a perfectionist then everything needs to be perfect even your dieting, so when you fail at your diet then you stop and wait for Monday to start over again so that you starting again perfectly.

So basically when you fail, you have admitted defeat and eat whatever you can get your hands on until Monday comes around again so that you can start again perfectly. But I don't just do this with my food, I've realised that I do this with my workout plan as well but because I follow a monthly workout plan I give up until the next month so that I can do it perfectly. This has been a real break through for me to realise that it's ok if I fail one day or if I don't do a workout one day because there is always the next. I have learnt that breaking my perfectionism is what I need to do in order to accomplish my why. 

There is something else I have realised today that has really shaped my new list of why. Over the past year I have slowly begun to realise that I have a severe body image issue. Its not just me thinking I'm fat but it has started to overtake my whole like. It has effected me hugely. I now know that when I look in the mirror I see myself as 10kg heavier then I really am, I think I am bigger then I am and I hate myself for that. I don't see what is there. I have let this image of myself dictate how I live my life. I now can't talk to people because I'm scared that they consistently thinking I'm too fat or I don't talk to men because I don't believe they would think I'm pretty enough or that I'm too fat. I have let this image of myself decrease what I am worth. This has scared me, I have lost friends and important people in my life because I have let myself go. 

I use to be social and outgoing. But now I'm just an introvert who just stays at home to afraid to go out and have a good time. It is as if I believe that I am not worthy of having a good time because of all this weight that I have put on. The question I have asked myself is whether this is a life worthy of living. 

So everything changed for me today, my why's have changed. The whole reason why I want to lose weight has gone from a list of perfectly normal reasons to more deeper and more intense reasons. And I think this list has opened up a part of me that I have been hiding away, pain that I have been hiding away because I didn't want to confront this. My mind didn't want me to see what it has done, the damage it has done and in order to fix it. I have to go out of my comfort zone and live through the pain in order to succeed. 

My new list of why's are:

• To believe I am worthy
• To be brave
• To be outgoing again
• To be strong
• To live a life worth living
• To believe in myself
• To be HAPPY
• To shred the negative body image I have
• To feel beautiful

So the question you need to ask yourself is why are you doing this? What is your true reasons?

 

Sacrifice

This week I volunteered to be a leader at my churches Holiday Bible Club. I enjoyed myself but it was challenging, I left last week emotionally and physically drained. I have never experienced children who were consistently at each other, being super nasty and behaving completely out of hand. And I've been an au pair for the past three years so I thought I had a good idea of how to handle children which was not the case. I really had to look at myself and think about how I reacted to certain situations and sometimes I overreacted which could have been from the lack of sleep but I feel I should have handle certain situations with a little more grace then I did. 

Not to mention that this was my first week of changing to a healthier lifestyle and yes I made mistakes and I wasn't perfect but I haven't given up. I started the week with a high because I weighed myself at 85.6kg so that means from the last time I had weighed myself I had lost three kgs which motivated me into this week. During the week I was extremely active during all the activities at HBC which ranged from dancing to running, I really forced myself into getting involved and tried my best to put myself out there socially as well considering I have lost my ability it seems to talk to people due to my self conception.  

However, it's extremely hard to carry on or even think about carrying on when you stand on that scale and you have stayed the same after a week of really trying to be good. But I guess its at these times where you do push forward and you try even harder because I haven't gotten anywhere giving up at this point so the only way I can go is forward now. I can only try harder because this isn't the life I want to live anymore. If anything, this week has taught me that sacrifice really rewards you in ways that you can't even imagine. I sacrificed my time this week to spend time with children that really challenged me and made me look at myself and made me look at how I deal with situations and how I react. I grew this week in many ways and I'm learning more about myself as I walk this journey.

Pirate day at HBC. I thought I did a pretty good job considering I had ten minutes to get ready

I need to look at this past week, I need to figure out what could have happened to hinder my weight lost but I don't have to beat myself up about it because even though I didn't lose any weight doesn't mean I haven't grown in other ways. And ultimately this journey is about learning, its about growing and its about developing myself into a better person. I want to grow in all the ways, and that's exactly why I sacrificed my time for HBC.

I look forward to this next week, I'm back on my exercise plan because I have recovered from my viral infection so hopefully I see a little bit of progress. It excites me to know that development is happening and I'm starting to change how I see myself, I'm starting to see ways I can better myself. It makes me proud to know that I am doing this and I haven't given up yet. I can do this. I will do this. Not for anybody else but for myself. 

Super hero day at HBC. I went as a Ninja Turtle and one of my girls went as batwoman

Betrayal

Tonight as I sat in my bath and stared at my face in the mirror and couldn't help but feel DEFEATED, TIRED, SCARED, DISAPPOINTED, EMBARRASSED, FAT and UGLY. Tears were running down my face as I realised how I was describing myself and it hit me hard. I am no longer who I once was and that took me by surprise. I was once confident, outgoing, funny and talkative but now I'm the background girl, the reserved girl, the self pity girl.

I can't exactly tell you the exact date that this started to happen, it scares me to think that I've been like this for a long time but as I look around me I feel like it has been years because I no longer have those people I cherished so dearly around me anymore. Because who wants the sad girl as their friend, the Debby downer as you would say. Or maybe the party pooper. Who wants the girl who is consistently second guessing her worth, second guessing her beauty, second guessing who she is.

I have betrayed myself.

I have allowed food to become my drug.

It satisfies me in ways nothing else does and that is both scary and sad.

I know I am not the only person who is struggling with such problems, lets face it we live in a world where eating disorders have blended into our society. We tuck it into the back of our minds to deal with it later because it is too hard to deal with it now. It's too hard to look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you have a problem and you need to figure something out. I was too scared to look at myself in the mirror. I still am but for the first time in a couple of years I have finally seen myself for who I have become. I have let my addiction create this person who doesn't respect herself anymore, who consistently bashes herself, who speaks negatively and someone who is too scared to live.

For about a year and a half I have been trying to focus on getting fit and thin and sexy. I even created a stupid Instagram account. Every night I go through my feed and see all these wonderful woman transform themselves into these amazingly beautiful woman and here I sit still the same weight...actually let's be honest for once I am now 3kg heavier and at my heaviest.

I guess I need to be honest with myself and look at myself once more in the mirror and ask myself what is more important at this point. Food or being happy, being the person I once was. Do I honestly want to be this sad person forever.

NO!!!!!!

I want to be confident. I want to be outgoing. I want to be worthy. I want to be me...and I might not know who me is yet but I am going to find her. I am taking this seriously because it takes that one real look at yourself in the mirror to realise how far you have fallen. And believe me I have fallen...I have nowhere else to go but back up. I need to climb back up and be the person who God created me to be. I need to take charge of my life.

And yes I know this isn't going to be easy. Believe me I know. I have been struggling with my weight for my whole life but I have this burning desire in my to change this. I WILL DO THIS. I CAN DO THIS!

I need to do this for me.
I need to change my life for the better.
I need to live for something because right now this drug is taking me down.