The Sickness....

Today Sister and I were watching Ruby as I tried to ponder what to blog about today. As we were watching the show, Ruby & her friends were talking about her "sickness" which is her addiction to food. She has lost nearly 400 lbs but has much farther to go. Her friends were basically bringing up the point to her that she has lost her motivation to keep losing weight even though that's what she says she wants all the time. She couldn't understand why the scale wasn't moving. Her honest friends then informed her that she hadn't been doing squat to lose the weight lately hence a 60lb weight gain. Although a lot of you don't have a 100 plus pounds to lose, trying to lose 10 to 20 lbs is just as hard.

Ruby's Page 

There were 3 key points that came up and I want to share with you all today:

The Sickness

Denial is a defense mechanism in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

What is food addiction? To me, it starts with overeating based on stress. Plain and simple. The stress can come from traumatic situations in your life (death, abuse, loss of a job, so forth..), it can be emotional eating which is what my problem was, or any number of things. I ate when I was happy, sad, mad, bored.... You name it, I ate it. When I would gain a few pounds here and there I would tell myself it's nothing I cant lose in a few weeks. I just need to cut back (starve) and work out (run like a crazy person while starving myself). And oh yes the weight would come off but then I would gain it back and THEN SOME. Has this ever happened to you? Do you know what I'm talking about? I have a feeling a lot of you do....

So many people are in denial about what kind of shape they are truly in. I was one of them. I knew I needed to lose the weight and I thought I knew all the answers on how to lose it but really I had no clue. I think that sometimes I even knew that I didn't know anything about losing weight the right way, I just choose to think otherwise because when I would think about what it's going to take to lose the weight it would be overwhelming. When I was finally ready to do something about my heath I was literally at my wits end. Mentally I was ready. That's what you have to do, get mentally ready because your body will do the work, it's your mind that's not ready.

Sabotaging Yourself

I had someone come up to me at the gym and let me know that they are reading my blog. I was really excited to hear this. They also shared with me some of their own struggles with weight loss. This particular person is in the gym every morning at 5am busting their butt. Just looking at them you would think that they eat healthy and are on track with their goals but they let me know that after leaving the gym that they have a hard time eating the right way... They sabotage their self. If you have the determination to get up and be at the gym at 5am every morning then you better get your diet in check because there is no point in doing all that hard work just go and eat something fatty for lunch or dinner and ruin everything you worked for!!!! Ive done that to myself so many times and when I think back about how many times I did it, ewww I GET SO MAD!!! Why did I do that? Why couldn't I see how ridiculous I was being?

Now I know why, I wasn't holding myself accountable. I was making tons of excuses for overeating or not even going to gym. OHH and the biggest mistake, getting to the gym not feeling like working out and leaving!! Oh yea I did it countless times. Pitiful... just pitiful...

Change Your Lifestyle

You will never get to where you want to be if you don't change your lifestyle. Take a look at your habits, good and bad. What are the positive habits you have? What are the negative? Now what can you do to change those negative habits? I literally had to change so many things in my life to meet my goals. I cant just go out to eat whenever I want. I cant just take days and weeks off from the gym. No way! I have to look at each gym session as challenge and push myself hard everyday. Every time I eat it has a purpose. I now look at food as fuel and nothing else. If it happens to taste good and it usually always does, then that's great. How do you view food? Is your lifestyle in the way of meeting your goals? 9 times out of 10 it usually is, unfortunately that's the ugly truth.


So what's the conclusion to all this... Accountability. Ultimately these are your goals, no one else's. You have to do the work. Not your Mamma, not your friend, not your husband or your trainer.. YOU. So stop making lame excuses and do the work. Change those terrible habits and get your life back. I have to put myself in check from time to time and I hate doing it but I feel so much better when I do, and so will you. I promise.


Here's to finding your NorthStar....