For those of you who love motivational quotes about fitness, exercise, and weight loss, I’ve got a quick link for you. Check out these 38 fitness motivational graphics.
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Ran across this video in my Facebook feed and I have to post it here for you guys. It makes me realize I have absolutely NO EXCUSE for skipping workouts or saying to myself, “You can’t do it.” Watch it all the way through to be amazed. I hope it gives you the motivation it has given me.
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I ran across this video on YouTube the other day and I just had to share it with you. This woman went from 293 pounds to 126 in about a year and a half.
The purpose of her video was to show the loose skin she is left with. But that’s what I found so inspiring – it wasn’t that bad! Her upper body especially looks fantastic. If I saw her on the street, I would never have guessed she had lost so much.
The loose skin is more obvious on her legs but again, I would have expected a lot worse from a 167-pound loss.
The reason this inspires me is that I often worry about having loose skin when I reach my goal. But since my starting weight was about 100 pounds less than hers, I really don’t think it’s going to be a problem, based on what I see in this video. Assuming I work hard at it, that is. 
Take a look—she starts showing her upper body results at the 3:22 mark. She looks great!
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Right now I own only one pair of pants that fits me. The tag says “Jeanstar” and the size is 14. I hate them.
They are unfashionably faded in weird places. The hems keep curling up. And although they fit right just below my waist, they are saggy under my rear end for some reason. Blech.
I bought them at a secondhand store just as something to wear around the house until I can fit into nice jeans. I didn’t despise them so much when I bought them, but now every time I put them on I shudder because I know they look terrible.
But I refuse to buy any more fat clothes. I am slowly shrinking (very slowly), but hopefully it won’t be long till I can burn these jeans. I mean that; I really will burn them once I don’t need them anymore. And I will dance around the fire.
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I’ve started this whole “I’ve gotta lose weight” process over and over again so many times and I’m tired of saying “This time I’M REALLY SERIOUS.” I don’t even believe myself anymore. But it’s never going to happen unless one of these times I actually follow through.
I’m 46 years old and not getting any younger. My younger sister is going to be a grandma this summer, and that means I am plenty old enough to be one myself. I don’t want to go into my grandma years looking and feeling this way about myself. It is high time to stop; I don’t have much time left. No, I’m not dying, but my physical limitations due to age, fibromyalgia, poor nutrition, and my sedentary lifestyle have gotten to the point where it’s not going to be long before I won’t be able to exercise to the degree needed. I won’t need a wheelchair any time soon, but this fibro is kicking my butt, and I know that I could make it better to a significant degree if I gave my body what it needs to function properly.
So I am looking at my 47th birthday coming up in three months, and that’s as good a goal as any to see if I can stick with something longer than two months. I have a terrible time getting past that two-month mark; I don’t know what it is. Usually by then I’ve lost 10 or 15 pounds, and that should be enough to really motivate me to further loss. But for some reason when I hit 60 days, I come to a screeching halt. I have no idea why I have such a mental block at that point.
I’ve got to take control. I’m not the person I’m supposed to be. I don’t like the fact that I’ve allowed myself to get off track from what I saw for myself when I looked toward my middle-aged years from the teenage perspective. I simply have to start changing.
Some of my most common excuses follow.
“I don’t have time because I have so much work to do.” But while I’m depressed and beating myself up about not exercising, I’ll sit on the couch and watch TV for an hour and don’t get my work done anyway! It’s stupid. Sure, there are days when I am genuinely too exhausted or sick due to the fibro or whatever, and that’s okay, I’ll deal with it. But on most days there’s absolutely no reason I can’t take an hour for the sake of my health. I waste an hour every day easily. I don’t like to admit it, but I know I do. I need to recapture that time.
“Exercise is too hard.” I recently realized that I have been waiting for it to be easy. Well, maybe not EASY, but at least not very hard. And that’s also stupid. It’s never going to be easy. But it can be enjoyable while also being challenging.
“I love food too much.” Well, get over it, Serena. There are a lot of things I love that I can’t do to the extent desired. I simply have to learn to love good food. And I am. Veggies are pretty good when your palate isn’t ruined by sugar.
“I’m too old to make such big changes.” Pfffft. I’ve seen a lot of women a lot older lose a lot of weight and look and feel great.
“I’ve failed before; I’ll fail again.” This is probably the biggest excuse for me and toughest to overcome. I view myself as someone who can never finish what she starts. And yet I know deep down I can do it if I just stop whining and get busy. I don’t know 100% for sure that I will succeed this time, but I know 100% for sure I won’t if I don’t try. Maybe I need to pretend to be confident until I really am.
What’s your excuse?
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Here’s the deal. I am not going to weigh myself anymore, at least not for a long time.
I did weigh myself weekly when I (re)started this blog back in May 2011 so I could report my progress here, but it got to a point where I couldn’t do it anymore. I have never been successful using daily or weekly weigh-ins, and I don’t know why I thought I would be this time.
I considered monthly weigh-ins, which are better than weekly, but I have to keep going back to the fact that the only time I successfully lost all the weight I wanted to lose, I did not weigh myself until I was very close to my goal size-wise. That was 20 years ago now. I began on December 1st of 1991, and between then and early June ’92, I did not step on the scale at all. When I finally did, the number was 121, a loss of 26 pounds in that 6-month period. It wasn’t fast weight loss, but it was almost 5 pounds a month, about a pound and a quarter per week.
After that, I did lose another 8 pounds, ending up at 113. I wasn’t trying for that; I was pretty happy with 121. I was trying to maintain but was obviously doing more than I needed to. So I let up a little and gained a few pounds back.
And you know the rest of that story. I couldn’t stop. Over the next 2 to 3 years I gained every last miserable pound back and then some. And ever since then I’ve been anywhere from 150 to 190+ for most of the last 17 or 18 years.
So I’m going to measure my progress simply by how my clothes are fitting and how I’m feeling. I’m not going to take regular measurements either. They too, being numbers, also have the ability to mess with my mind and throw me all off. I guess I am just not capable of taking the power away from numbers on the scale or measuring tape. If they don’t show what I think they should, I lose motivation.
Some people need the scale to stay motivated, and I say, more power to them. We’re all different. We should do whatever works for us individually!
My scale is not dependable anyway. It never shows the same number as other scales, such as the one at my sister’s house or at my local clinic. I’m going to assume that I’m somewhere around 191 again, my all-time high, since the last few months have been very difficult and I know I’ve gained some or all of the weight back that I lost last year. It is not a number I am interested in knowing at this point. All I know is that I weigh more than my husband again and I hate that.
The exact number doesn’t really matter anyway; it really doesn’t. I just know that I am having more and more trouble getting out of the car or up off the couch with any semblance of grace! And I know that when I pass a mirror in a department store or see a photo of myself, I’m shocked all over again, wondering when I turned into that lumpy frumpy middle-aged woman.
So my intention is to stay off the scale for at least 6 months, maybe more. And then stay off for the next 6 months too. A year from now, I hope to reach my goal of 135. At that point, I’ll reassess whether to continue or stay there.
It’s the NO-WEIGH WAY! Do you weigh yourself regularly? How often? How do you keep those numbers from messing with your head?
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