When you start to make healthy changes and see the difference it becomes contagious! You don’t want to go back to how you were before because that didn’t feel good mentally or physically. Before I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted but I was like a pork sausage jammed into my clothing. I felt sad, and ugly. At the end of the day I beat myself up, every single day!

Now, I am look forward to getting up each day doing my best. I love it. I create small goals to achieve in between getting to my main goal. Don’t get me wrong, I look forward to achieving my primary goal weight so I can enjoy the maintenance calories, but making these changes to choose lower calorie high volume foods is the best thing I have ever stumbled on! I love seeing the scale and my body reflect these changes. I love that at the end of the day I have room for low calorie snack like pretzels or popcorn, and it does not annihilate all my work!

When I was in my downward spiral of weight gain, I actually had the mindset of “its ok I can lose the weight later.” And I remember thinking that when I had gained the first time as well, I’ll get through this stressful time and then lose later. Like being out of control somehow helped me get through that moment in my life?? Its not okay to let yourself get fat and unhealthy, to cope with problems. It’s not ok to let yourself get so depressed that you don’t want to get up for days at a time. Would you let your friend or child do that? You’d do everything you could to help them.

Weight loss tends to be slower for me, and I also tend to be a slow study. It takes me a while to find what works and to be actually honest about my calories. I am still fascinated with others who start a diet plan and lose double what I have lost in the same amount of time. While I think I am being stringent, I wonder about them? I wonder how their bodies work different than mine!

Things I know about myself, if I am not watching my calories (aka tracking them) them carefully I will cheat, and eat more and more. This is a given and basically who I am. Knowing this I feel like I need to forever track my diet as a part of my life, like that of exercise. How silly right? Its become very clear to me, based on my analysis, that I always let emotions run the show if I am not monitoring these aspects of my life.

Is being healthy contagious for you? Or is it a chore? I actually like the chore because the opposite makes me gross lol