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