Category: Weight Loss

“Allow People to be Wrong About You.”

Hello friends!  If you have been keeping up with my blog posts, you may be a little confused why my weight loss blog has taken a dramatic turn in a different direction.  I have had some major insights into myself lately.  When I was focused on my ability to control my decisions and use those decisions to change my life, I was finding extreme success with my weight loss goals.  Unfortunately, as I began to focus on the number of pounds lost and winning the weight loss competition, I began to stumble on my journey and some of my negative thinking cycles began sneaking back into my life.

That’s when I asked myself whether I created this site to brag about my success or tell you how I’m doing it.  With this new strength, gained through insight, I decided that my blog needs to ditch the weekly weigh in and take its focus in a different direction.  I could give you recipes and weekly menus, but those things are literally splashed on every corner of the internet. What isn’t as focused on?  HEALING THE MINDSET THAT ALLOWS FOR THE WEIGHT LOSS PROBLEM TO EXIST!  How many times have I said that the hardest part of my journey has been the mental one?  So, why am I not focusing on what’s changing THE MOST?!

Changing My Mindset

My last post focused on the damage of being a people pleaser, but I want this post to take it a step further.  We say we are a people pleaser because it sounds like we are a selfless, giving person, but it really means that we are liars that are constantly failing to please everyone and our relationships and mental health are suffering for it.  Today, I want to introduce you to a new, revolutionary figure in my life:  Brooke Castillo.

Remember when I mentioned my life coach buddy a few weeks ago?  He introduced me to Brooke.  He asked me to listen to her podcast episode on self-confidence.  I was immediately hooked.  Brooke spoke on a concept that I have known, but never fully understood quite so clearly.  Seriously, I have been needing to hear this all my life:  “Allow people to be wrong about you.”

Brooke shared that we often times allow the perceptions of others to define us and we are constantly doing everything we can to make people see us in the best possible light.  In my case, this became the unhealthy habit of people pleasing.  By always trying to please others, I was neglecting and abusing myself.  I would put other people’s thoughts, opinions, feelings, and desires above my own.  In doing so, I was constantly reinforcing the highly damaging thought that others are better than me and my identity ONLY comes from their thoughts and opinions about me.

I have done soooo many things all in an effort to ensure people like me.  At best, I would allow others to make my choices for me.  At the worst, I let a former “best friend” constantly berate me while always making him one of my top priorities.  In working so hard to make others like me, I created an environment that reinforced my negative thinking patterns and made me into a person that I really didn’t like myself very much.

man-416473_1920

So, what does this have to do with allowing people to be wrong about you?  Well, in ending my people pleasing ways, I have had to accept the truth that I can’t make anyone like me, but I’ve also accepted the truth that who I am is not defined by what others think of me.  As I discussed in my last post, I’m learning to live honestly.  Now, when I am tempted to give an excuse or tell a lie in an effort to control how another person views me, I give my honest answer without excuse, explanation, or lie.  If their resulting opinion of me changes to the negative, I have to allow them to be wrong about me.

Last week, I gave a hypothetical situation:  You get asked by your best friend if you want to help her daughter’s girl scout troop sell cookies outside of Wal-Mart on the first pretty Saturday your area has had in weeks. You had planned to spend the day with your hammock and a good book because your kids are spending the day at a birthday party and you finally have some much-needed time alone.

You want time to recharge your batteries, but you don’t want your friend to be mad at you.  You may tempted to help despite not really wanting to.  You could choose to lie and give an excuse that will relieve you from the situation, but also any potential judgement by your friend.  However, the best option is to simply give an honest answer without worrying so much about how your friend perceives you.  If you tell your friend that you are unavailable to help as you are spending the day focusing on recharging your batteries and she thinks you are selfish, her thoughts about you don’t change who you actually are at all.

When you are always honest, people learn that you value them enough to always tell them the truth.  I’m not saying everyone will like it, but you will always have people that don’t like what you are doing.  I had people that didn’t like when I started losing weight and some even tried to talk me out of it, others that constantly told me that I was going to fail, and others tried to sabotage my weight loss.  I had to allow them to be wrong about me.  Some got on board with me and others didn’t.

Allowing others to be wrong about you is a very difficult thing.  It’s hard to be confident in who you are when you’ve allowed those around you to define you all your life.  However, by fully embracing that you are who you choose to be, you are empowered to break the bondage of always needing the affirmation of others to know who you are and you recognize your power to be the person you choose regardless of what others think.

For now, though, it’s back to taking my life back.  Find me on social media:

The Danger Of Being a People Pleaser

Good morning, friends!  Before I get started today, I want to take the time to thank everyone that has been following my journey.  This past week was a very busy one for me.  On Monday, I went to a Young Living event to learn about all the new products that were released at convention this year.  I love Young Living events because I get to meet new people and visit with the friends I have made since joining the company.

This week, I met a young woman.  She approached me and told me that she reads my blog and finds the content to be very encouraging. You know, it’s so easy to assume that the same people are reading your blog and to forget that people you haven’t met are finding the blog and following along with the journey.  It was a good moment for me and I found it very encouraging.  So, thank you everyone.  Whether this is your first time here or you’ve been here for every post, thank you for taking the time to share in my life.  While you’re here, take a moment to post a comment and share your life with me.

I Am a People Pleaser

After talking about the power to change your thoughts, I want to take the time today to talk about the dangers of being a people pleaser.  I just went to Google and typed in “What is a people pleaser.”  The first result was an article from Psychology Today and it  shared, “A People Pleaser is one of the nicest and most helpful people you know. They never say ‘no.’ You can always count on them for a favor. In fact, they spend a great deal of time doing things for other people. They get their work done, help others with their work, make all the plans, and are always there for family members and friends.”  Sounds great, right?

Honestly, people pleasers are great… unless you are one.  People pleasers are willing to sacrifice their own thoughts and feelings through acts that are designed to make everybody like them.  These aren’t truly acts of friendship.  They are acts of manipulation.  When you use your behavior in an attempt to control or sway the thoughts/behaviors/feelings of someone else, you are manipulating them.  This relationship pattern frequently leaves us filled with all sorts of negative emotions about ourselves and others and we turn to food to cope with these feelings.  I am a people pleaser and I have noticed a few issues with this relationship pattern:  1) it makes you a liar, 2) it’s not possible to please everyone, and 3) it’s builds resentment which destroys relationship.

It Makes You a Liar

Picture this:  You get asked by your best friend if you want to help her daughter’s girl scout troop sell cookies outside of Wal-Mart on the first pretty Saturday your area has had in weeks.  You had planned to spend the day with your hammock and a good book cause your kids are spending the day at a birthday party and you finally have some much-needed time alone.

As a people pleaser, I can’t tell you how many times I have blatantly lied in an attempt to ensure that someone liked me or to control their opinion of me.  Don’t get me wrong, they were good lies.  Er… well… they were helpful lies… unless you are one of those strict moralists that believes there is no such thing as a good or helpful lie… which I am…

Do you see the problem?  Lies don’t make friends.  We become a liar ANY time we are in a situation where we agree to do something we don’t want to do.  We mistakenly believe that the sacrifice we put ourselves through makes us a better person or better friend, but it doesn’t.  It makes us a liar.

Even when we do tell the truth, there is always a temptation to blanket the truth with a more acceptable lie.  In the situation above, we respond, “Oh… dang.  My week has been so busy.  I have to catch up on errands and housework.  I wish I could.”  We know that our week has been busy and that we have prioritized our mental health over our housework, but we don’t want to risk the chance that we may be viewed in a negative light.  So, we give a more acceptable reason… a lie.

It’s Not Possible to Please Everyone

The second issue that I find with being a people pleaser is that it’s literally not possible to please everyone.  The only person we can control is ourselves.  Everyone else gets to control themselves.  When we choose to define ourselves based on the thoughts and opinions of everyone around us, we create in ourselves an unstable self-esteem that is completely out of our control and never stable.

Take the scenario above.  You agree to help out of fear of your friend rejecting you or viewing you as selfish and sacrifice your own needs (manipulation to control their perception of you).  Then, during the event, you and your friend get into a disagreement over an issue and you’re left at the end of the day having neglected yourself, feeling rejected by your friend, and completely in shambles despite your best efforts to earn the exact opposite.

The people around us are free to do as they please.  Regardless of our tactics, we can never truly control the thoughts/feelings/behaviors of anyone.  When our self-esteem hinges on making everyone around us view us in the best possible light, we have set ourselves up for a life of misery.  It’s simply not possible.

It Builds Resentment Which Destroys Relationship

Nobody likes a selfish person.  When we live the life of a people pleaser, we constantly prioritize the needs and wants of those around us in an effort to make people like us.  All too often, this repeated pattern of sacrificing our own needs begins to feel a bit one-sided and we begin to feel pangs of resentment when that sacrifice isn’t reciprocated.  There are several ways this can show up.  Sometimes we just get sick of always feeling “walked on” or sometimes we get frustrated that they aren’t as willing to do the same for us when we are the ones in need.

Come on, on now, be honest.  This is where our true motives are revealed:  those moments when we are the one in need and our friend doesn’t do what we want them to.  Our discussion (either internally or externally to someone else) sounds a bit like, “I can’t believe they won’t help me.  How many times have I dropped what I was doing for them?!”

In our effort to “earn” their friendship and control their opinions of us, we also built a pattern where we expect our efforts to be reciprocated. When that doesn’t happen, the lie falls apart.  We never did those things because we wanted to do them.  We did them entirely for selfish reasons.  Regardless of the manner in which it is developed, resentment ALWAYS shows it’s ugly head and begins to deteriorate the relationship.  Sometimes this process only takes a few days.  In other relationships, this process can play out over years and years, but it always happens.

What Do We Do About It?

I’m going to be addressing this topic in my next blog post.  However, the simplest way to answer this question is to value yourself and your friends enough to live a life of honesty.  We are adults and can do as we please without needing to explain or justify the choices that we make and our friends are, too.  If we don’t want to help sell girl scout cookies outside Wal-Mart, we have every right to decline the request without the need to lie or explain.  I know this triggers a very real fear for some of us as we immediately begin to panic at the thought of what our friends will think of us if we really lived this way, but we will pick up here next time!

For now, though, it’s back to taking my life back.  Find me on social media:

Empowering a Life Change

Hello everyone!  How’s your day going?  Aren’t you thankful you have a job today?  By the time this will go “live,” our work week will be in full swing and, sometimes, it’s easy to forget about all the positive things our job brings to our lives as we are faced with all the negative things about our jobs that tend to catch the majority of our focus.  For me, I have been taking a few minutes each morning to reflect on those positive aspects of my job and making a conscious effort to approach my job with a positive and authentic attitude.

I am so excited about the changes that are happening in me that I am writing this post just a few hours after my last post went up on Sunday.  In my last post, I did my best to share how I have been refocusing on the thoughts that empowered this weight loss journey.   Today, I want to flesh that out a little more.  To do that, I have to open a few locked doors and let you into my mind a little bit.  While I admit that I am extremely apprehensive about this, I also acknowledge that this process is absolutely necessary.

When I began to understand and believe that I have the power to control my thoughts and live the life that I want to live, I was empowered to engage in a process of change that has led to the loss of 120 pounds.  This one, single thought was like a bomb in the middle of my former patterns of thinking which were the very opposite of the statement I just made.  Before I realized the power I have over who I am, I had a lot of thinking errors that excused and justified the very unhealthy life that I was living.

The biggest thinking error that I have ever used was that I was a victim of my life and my circumstances.  I’m not even sure that this was an active thought in my life.  Somewhere along the line, I began viewing myself as less than the author of my life’s story.  For the most part, I seen myself in much more of a reactive role in my life.  Honestly, I believed that this was typical for most everybody else and only the lucky ones catch a break that allows them to live above their circumstances.

This thinking error fueled a thought pattern that allowed me to play the victim in every area of my life that I found to be less than desirable. It would be impossible to identify them all, but I want to give you a sample so that you can understand the point I am trying to make.

  • Undesirable Life Reality:  I weighed 450 pounds.
    • Thinking Error:  Bad genes have been cruel to me and I can never be at a healthy weight like everyone else.  (I can’t control it)
  • Undesirable Life Reality:  I have a low self-esteem.
    • Thinking Error:  My past experiences and mistakes have tainted my life and left me damaged.  I am unworthy and will never be as good as anybody else. (I can’t change it)
  • Undesirable Life Reality:  I have experienced repeated perceived rejections by authority figures.
    • Thinking error:  They all can see that I am not good enough and, thus, have never seen the benefit of investing in my life in any meaningful way.  They identify those with potential and spend their time where it is worthwhile.  (This is just who I am)

Again, this list could go on and on, but that’s already enough for me to begin experiencing some of those past thoughts that kept me defeated for so long.  Looking to the past can only give me information about how to move forward.  Lingering too long, especially this close to actually believing those things, can only bring up painful beliefs and tempt me to pick them back up.

Back in September, my friend, Elizabeth, shared her story with me of how she took control of her weight by taking control of what she ate.  Regardless of anything else I had ever heard up to that point in my life, Elizabeth sparked a hope within me that I had the power to take control of my weight.  Within weeks, I was losing weight at a pace I never thought possible.  This experience is what began overtly challenging these thinking errors that I had held dear for so long.  I could not continue to believe that I can’t control my weight when I was so clearly doing just that.

By tapping into the power to take control of my weight, I was beginning to tap into the power to change my thoughts, which empowered me to begin changing my behavior and, thus, I began to take control of who I am.  Through these very liberating weeks of incredible change, I was breaking changes of bondage that were holding me captive.  Chains forged by nothing more than my own thinking errors and faulty perceptions.

A quick review of my pictures alone will show you that much more than just my weight was changing!  My eyes, the very windows to my soul, were radiating with a light that hadn’t been seen in them since pictures before I was old enough to experience those things that began contributing to the thinking errors I had developed.  For the first time in my life, I was experiencing the hope that I was the author of my story and that I decide, today, what my reality will be rather than having my reality be dictated by circumstances that are out of my control or past experiences that I can’t change.

If you have never experienced this type of thinking error, my words my seem frivolous or small, but for those of you that read this that know the weight of similar chains, you know exactly what I am talking about and how life-altering this realization was!

I have the power to change my thoughts and live the life I want to live.  -Me

If you are going to understand my journey and the renewed focus of my blog, you HAVE to understand that my success was never about the number on a scale.  No, my success is found in the daily decisions I make to take my life back from a dark, and defeating, prison of my own thinking errors.  Sorry, dear reader, but it’s not a solitary war I had to overcome.  It’s a daily battle – one that is not easy, but one that is SO empowering, liberating, and WORTH IT!

As I watch the word count continue to rise, I want so desperately to continue with what I am sharing, but I know there will be other posts… other opportunities to share my journey.   Thank you for taking the time to read this post and please let me know what you think.

For now, though, it’s back to taking my life back.  Find me on social media:

The True Work of Weight Loss

Hello friends!  How is your Sunday morning going so far?  As I began thinking about my blog this morning, I thought about what you all are doing right now in your life.  So many different scenarios flashed through my mind as I pictured some of you still sleeping while others are hurriedly trying to get your families ready for church.  Maybe you are making breakfast for you and your loved ones or maybe you’ve already embarked out into the world to get a jump start on your To-Do List – that always seems way too full.  Regardless of what you are doing, I find it fascinating that we all choose to approach our lives so very differently, but we all seem to make it through each day and life goes on!

I received a message this week that led to a phone conversation with a long-time friend that I don’t speak with regularly.  While I used the word “friend,” I think it’s important to clarify that we encounter people throughout our lives that are not all destined to become a person that we speak with everyday, but their support, friendship, and love, are felt regularly throughout our lives. Yet, when you do get the chance to visit again, it feels as if you pick up and visit as easily as if you had spoken to each other every single day.

Conversations with this friend have always been growth experiences.  You see, my friend is a professional life coach and has worked with so many wonderful people that are in very different stages of their lives.  What led him to contact me was his continuing observation of my journey.  He shared with me how exciting it has been to watch as my journey develops, but he had noticed a very subtle, yet substantial, shift in my thinking which he wanted to process with me.  What resulted was an amazing 75 minute phone conversation where he listened, supported, challenged, and clarified the thoughts that have been fueling this incredible journey.

Using only my words, he masterfully navigated through the mental renovations of this journey and helped bring clarity to what has been occurring in my thought life.  While acknowledging it seemed I would eventually navigate my way through this process on my own, he shared his desire was to help me do so more quickly.

Our conversation started with a discussion about where I am in life and the recent things that I have been thinking, doing, and achieving.  Next, he led our conversation back to the core of what had started this journey and, together, we processed what empowered these changes in the first place. Then, we moved towards the subtle change in my thoughts as my journey continued.  Finally, he skillfully broke down the things I was saying throughout this conversation and assisted me in clarifying the conversation into usable information for growth and continued success.

Regardless of how much I want to flesh this out (because I LOVE talking), I must keep this brief if for no other reason than length and time.  This journey started as a mental one, but my perception of blogging and my own success had slowly transformed the basis of this journey into a focus on external success – pounds lost.  After our conversation, I went back to old blog entries to see if I could find proof of these changes.  In January, I posted an entry that talks about the mental journey of weight loss.  In that entry, I wrote, “You see, losing weight has been so much more of a mental journey than a physical journey.”  I later also admit, “It fits like a glove that is too small and it doesn’t happen for me naturally. I have to FORCE myself to live within my new life choices.”  However, the signs of my shift in focus are also present.  I mention several goals throughout the entry.  Goals for walking, blogging, and “health goals.”  Yet, if you are paying attention, you can easily see I mean “weight goals” or “pounds lost.”

While doing the difficult work of self-evaluation with my friend, I gained a much more clarified insight into what was happening with my thought patterns and the effects that these changes had brought to my journey.  Again, using only my words, my friend was able to help me clarify that the most empowering thought I ever had in this journey was that I had the power to control my thoughts and live the life I wanted to live.  That I was not a victim to genetics, finances, my current life status, or any unseen external force.  If I didn’t want to be morbidly obese, I had the power to change it!

There’s SOO much that has been happening in my thoughts this week and SOO much I want to share with you, but this sharing will have to come another day.  For now, though, I want to clarify my vision for this blog.  When I came up with the address, I wanted a title that expressed that this journey was more than losing 250 pounds.  Thus, 250pounds2forever.com was born.  However, while the title was very appropriate then, the title has come to mean so much more than I even planned for it.

I’m going to utilize my blog to share about my journey, but I want to do so in a way that I am sharing what is changing my life rather than just announcing that my life has changed.  What changed my life was the realization that I had the power to control my thoughts and to choose the life I want to live.  Everything else has been a side-effect of the decision to control my thoughts and use my new thoughts to change my behaviors.

This is where I am tempted to announce a list of what is going to change as a result of my ongoing enlightenment this week, but I’m not going to do that.  I am an ever-evolving person and this blog is an outgrowth of who I am.  So, I’m simply going to allow this blog to grow and evolve with me.  That being said, I do have one big change that I’m implementing today:  no more weekly weigh in.

As difficult as it will be for me, I’m going to resist the temptation to qualify my success through the loss of pounds.  Am I success if I lose 3.5 pounds this week?  Am I failure if I don’t lose any pounds this week?  Perhaps true success is defined by something more than a numerical representation of my body’s interaction with gravity on any given day.  While I may share certain external successes, this blog is going to focus on where the hardest work is done:  my thought life.

I have the power to change my thoughts and live the life I want to live.  -Me

For now, though, it’s back to taking my life back.  Find me on social media:

Living Up To My Perceived Potential

It’s been awhile… again.  I guess, by now, you have figured out that I drifted away from blogging.  To myself, I denied it.  I would tell myself how busy I was or give myself excuses, but there were moments of clarity.  Moments when the denial was cracked by a brief glimpse of truth.  These were moments when my honest thoughts would provide a ray of honesty into my existence and my denial would be challenged.  Simple moments when I realized I had time to blog or should create a blog and I simply had no desire to do so.

This exactly matched my pattern of drifting away from the healthy eating patterns that I had been pursuing so strongly.  In May, I became much more lax and ceased working out.  So far, in June, I have given up any pretense of healthy eating patterns.  Unfortunately, I have given everyone the opportunity to say I’m just like every other failure at weight loss.  You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?  Those people that announce they are going on a diet, start having a little success, talking about it constantly, and then give up without ever really talking about it.

Why did I stop?  Well, there are a lot of excuses, but no good reasons.  It’s honestly difficult to try and come with something that is creative and new each week.  Also, it’s a lot of work after a busy week of counseling, life responsibilities, and teaching about essential oils, to come home and find the energy to type out a blog.  Not only is there finding something to blog about, there’s making the perfect graphics, creating the an eye-catching title, launching the perfect Facebook post, etc.  All to wait and see how people respond to your creation.  Too short? Too long?  Okay?  Perfect?  Amazing?  10 readers?  4,000 readers?

Those are some good excuses, aren’t they?  Great!  I can play a victim to circumstance and difficulty and go on without a second thought.  Right?  It’s my pattern.  Okay, then, why did I stop losing weight?  Was I too busy to work out?  Yes.  Struggling through windows of bad allergies and back pain?  Sure.  I have tons of excuses, but I honestly lost the biggest majority of my weight through eating patterns alone.  That nullifies all excuses because the eating patterns were cheaper and would help me continue, or at the very least, maintain my weight.  Damnit!  This creates an area where I can’t excuse the behavior and move on.

I crashed.  Hard.  All my worst coping mechanisms showed up and I struggled for a couple weeks without even really understanding why I was crashing.  One night, as I was driving home, my internal dialogue lead me to a place of evaluating this situation and I stumbled upon a thought.  This thought seemed much bigger than me.  A thought so true that I needed to share it here even though it would require me swallowing my pride and being more real than I ever cared to…

As I was having my internal discussion, I realized this is about the third time that I have gone through this cycle.  The first time, I went from 350 to about 340 and I crashed.  The second time, I went from about 400 to 330 (I thought) and crashed when I realized my scale was broken and I was actually just under 350.  This time, I started my cycle at 450 and I got down to ACTUAL 330 (327) and stopped again.  Why would I keep doing this?  I know what is next… I slip and make excuses for big meals and cheat snacks until I’ve gained all the weight back and all the pounds brought friends.

So… You ready for the big reveal?  The real reason I quit my blogging and my weight loss?  I’m stuck in this cycle because I’m living up to my perception of my potential.  Once this thought hit me, I googled it and found this:

I was right.  Though I never watch Dr. Phil and know absolutely nothing about him, I was seeing confirmation of what I was thinking.  In order for me to press forward in this journey, I was going to have to change my perception of what I deserve and what defines the best or highest potential for me.  Unfortunately, this revelation was happening at a time when my best friendship was falling apart, I was missing personal goals for my essential oils business, and my life seemed to be defined by situations that only confirmed the opposite to be true.

So, I just sit on this truth and continued to allow my backslide to happen.  Each week, I committed to change, but never intended to follow through.  That all changes now.  I am committing to myself that I am going to change this.  Not because my friendship has healed.  It hasn’t.  Not because I’ve reached my big goal with my essential oils business.  I haven’t (though I have hit good goals).  Nor because I have been the recipient of some major miracle or visit from an angel to remind me that I’m God’s child and worth the very best this life has to offer.  I haven’t.

I think the only thing that has changed is my realization that I have lived through these things before and I have survived.  Not my friends that stood by me.  Not my family that loves me.  Not my wife that is always there for me.  I have survived my life.  I am good enough – even when I don’t feel good enough.  I am worth it.  I deserve better.  I am worth the very best in life and deserve every form of success that I may encounter in this life – even if the people around me don’t seem to believe it, either.

I know I haven’t lost this battle unless I continue to remain on the ground and allow myself to continue being defeated.  That’s not what’s going to happen here.  Not for readers,  Not for family or friends.  For me.  I can’t lose sight of that or my green personality will torture me back into a position of defeat.  It’s time I rely on my red side to drive me even when it doesn’t feel comfortable and I don’t really want to.

There are no pictures and there will be no weigh in posted.  This blog is as raw and real as it can get and I’m just going to leave it as it is… and that is good enough for me.

Self-Sabotage

So, they announced the winners of phase one for the weight loss competition.  Overall, while I am completely loving my overall experience with Young Living, I have been very wordswag_1491937060457disappointed with their weight loss competition.  Do their products work?  Yeah.  I just haven’t been a big fan of the way they chose to run this competition.  They had a very large registration window – allowing for people to enroll their starting weight a full month before the competition started.  There was no progress chart for us to see our standing.   They changed the rules mid-stream and their announcement of the winners included NO information about the winner’s progress or where we all fell on the chart in standings.  Honestly, something seems amuck and it has left me not caring about finishing their competition.  I mean – I lost like 30 pounds and 19 inches, but another person self-proclaimed they lost 7 pounds and somehow lost over 30 inches?  Maybe I don’t live in their version of reality.

That being said, I started the competition at just under 380 pounds and I am now 337.4 – so I’m still rockin’ it!  I’m proud of myself and my accomplishments.  I’m proud I walked five days a week – EVERY SINGLE WEEK – and made mostly phenomenal eating choices throughout the competition.  Could I have done better?  Sure, but everyone knows that I busted my butt to win this thing and I can’t feel bad about my progress.

I’ve wanted to post about self-sabotage for the last few weeks?  Did you see that I weigh a little more than I did when I last posted?  Yeah… I don’t know if you can call that sabotage, but I feel like it is.

The hardest thing about this long journey of weight loss is that life keeps moving.  Work still causes stress, relationship difficulties still sap all your energy and leave you too depressed to want to go to a gym… heck, even human nature itself sometimes gets in the way of “feeling” the need to get out there and pound the pavement.  For me, though, I still struggle with a spirit that is easy to break.  I’ve experienced this when I hit major milestones and I realize how very far I still have left to go.  I’ve also experienced disappointment with the numbers not moving as much as I wanted after a few days pass.  I have experienced the desire to get to a goal so bad that the stress I place on myself increases my temptation.  Most recently, though, I have noticed how much external validation plays into my weight loss journey.  231ac1e478c6cc93c4c7d01bd4e254d0

After the first phase of the competition ended and waiting period began, I watched as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into a month before the results were announced.  To be honest with you, this period of time killed me.  I wanted to know I won.  I wanted my efforts to be validated.  I wanted to feel like I had done something that made me worth it.  As this antagonizing waiting period stretched on, I found I gave into temptation so much more frequently than I ever have.  To be even more honest, this weekend I made a ton of choices that I never would have made before after I experienced the crushing and unsatisfying announcement of the results.

I expected that there would be a post showing the overall progress and, if I didn’t win, I could still show that I came in near the top.  Yet, I wasn’t given that.  I was only given a short announcement that identified the names of the winner…  I cursed out loud and immediately sought out unhealthy food and alcohol.  How could they do this?  Something feels wrong!  I feel so… cheated!  For the rest of the weekend, I continued to make unhealthy choices as I ate whatever I wanted and however much I wanted.

It was with my behaviors during the waiting period for announcements and the choices I made after the announcement, I knew I had to talk about self-sabotage.  With all the success I have been having, why would I have such a strong need to have the validation of this weight loss competition when the ultimate award for losing this weight is so much more important than prizes or prize money?  How much would you pay to be able to tie your shoes or go to the zoo and walk 7.5 miles in 3 hours and still have the energy to make it through the rest of your day?  To me, these abilities have become priceless.  So, why would I sabotage my progress over something so stupid as waiting forever for progressresults or losing a competition?

Maybe I got so focused on the prizes that I forgot what this journey is all about?  Maybe I got so focused on overcoming that I lost sight of the fact that I am already winning?  Maybe I will  always struggle with inner voices that make me incapable of seeing my own worth?  Perhaps it is not about being perfect or being the best? Maybe I need to be okay with just being me and not being so focused on external sources for defining my self worth?  Maybe I just need to be focused on being the best version of myself that I can be and roll with both the good weeks and the bad weeks?

For now, though, it’s back to taking my life back…

  • September 11, 2016: 450+pounds
  • Today: 337.4 pounds
  • Total loss  112.6 pounds (42.1% of my total excess body weight)

Find me on social media:

New Around Here?

What a beautiful day!  With the sun out and the temperature coming in at just below 70 degrees, today is a day of beauty!  The sun is shining, the birds are singing, I can drive with the windows down, and I am gearing up for my last client of the day!  I hope you are enjoying a beautiful Tuesday, as well.  I thought I would take a minute to address those of you that may be new around here.

Back in September, I was chatting with a great friend, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth shared the story of her weight transformation that occurred just prior to our meeting.  As she talked me1with me, I was filled with hope.  This hope was born out of the realization that I had a very tangible control over my weight situation.  Until  then, I felt my weight was a curse upon my life and I was a victim.  To reinforce this negative line of thinking, I had created a list of subconscious lies that empowered that thinking and I had resigned myself to always being a victim of genetics and life circumstances rather than in control of my situation.  Her story also taught me that the true work of weight loss is more control of what you are taking in rather than what you are exercising out – a concept that completely reversed my misconception of what it meant to lose weight.

On September 11, 2016, I embarked on a journey.  Weighing in at 450 pounds, wearing size 60 jeans, and wearing 5xl shirts, I decided that I needed to take control of my life and save myself from the brink of becoming dependent upon others for caring for my daily needs.  Barely able to tie my shoes and unable to get out of bed without back or sciatica pain, I took control of the calories I was eating and the weight began to fall off.

Today, I am weighing 336.8 pounds, wearing size 48 jeans, and 2xl shirts.  Thanks to a handy count up app on my smart phone, I can tell you that today is day 205 of my newwp-1491073063214.jpg journey and, while I’m still obese, I am back to a much more normal size and quickly closing  in on the half way point of my journey.

I started this site to help encourage people that are struggling to find their pace and take control of their own lives.  While it has taken some time, my wife and I have both known people that have watched our transformations and began to embark on their own journeys.

So, whether you need to lose 20 pounds or 250, this is the place for you.  I’m not a person that is preaching about health and has never been overweight.  If you take the time to read through my raw and very personal posts, you’ll find that I’ve been sharing an honest window into my life in order to let others know the struggles (mental and physical) that I have been enduring in order to make this happen.

The important thing is that you stop using thinking errors, you realize the control you have over your own weight situation, and you stop delaying the institution of necessary changes for weight loss.  The journey of our lives is not one that we can ever take reset or do over.  I had made promises that I would lose weight before I hit 20, 25, 30, etc.  None of those ever worked.  I made a decision and acted on it.  Then, I followed through.

For now, though, it’s back to taking my life back…

Find me on social media:

Time Away – My Journey Continues

Just when you thought I disappeared, I am back!  I needed some time to take a step back and clear my head.  For the past few weeks, I have been missing from the blogging wp-1491073113135.jpgworld, but I needed the time to refocus my energies and invest in my mental health.  I’ve focused on sharing essential oils with my friends and family, working, going to gym, playing video games with my XBOX One friends, and scrambling to find Garth Brooks tickets at cost!  I didn’t fall off the wagon, I’ve been cleaning the wagon and pressing ever forward.

My focus for both my weight loss and building my team with Young Living essential oils has been to enjoy the journey rather than running myself to death towards a destination.  For weight loss, this means that I have been steadily cruising through my new norm.  For essential oils, I worked more than I ever have to invest in sharing Young Living and helping to invest in the people that have already started on this journey with me.  The results have been the same for both my weight loss and Young Living journeys:  steady progress.  Sometimes, we got so focused on a specific goal that it can be easy to become frustrated and give up, but we must remind ourselves that the slow steps wp-1491073104211.pngforward are so much more important than a failed lunge forward.  Also, if we take time to enjoy the journey, we can reach the destination having enjoyed the steps that got us there.

What has changed?

Rather than focusing my energies on walking between 3-5 miles a day, I have been investing my time in heading to the gym.  I joined a gym because my body had a desire to move faster than I could walk.  Fearing potential damage to my joints, I elected to utilize the elliptical machine so that I could move faster, but avoid any long-term damage.  Thus far, I have struggled with the elliptical due to the speed increase.  I started by doing 20 minutes on the elliptical, but now I have worked my way up to about 45 minutes.

wp-1491073081914.jpgI have also added the use of several weight machines.  Planet Fitness has a 30 minute workout cycle.  I do those machines for 60 seconds each using very low weights and doing as many reps as possible.  I also, occasionally, use a step box to do a variety of cardio exercises in between each machine, but I also allow myself to do fewer of these than other days based on how hard I push myself with the elliptical.

Another change is that I am not tracking my calories as diligently.  Until recently, I focused my efforts on calculating each and every calorie I put into my mouth.  It seems more common now for me to focus my attentions on eating the right foods and not putting as much stress on myself at staying on a certain number.  The results?  Well, the last few weeks I have been losing an average of 4 pounds per week whereas I was losing 3.4 per week.  It seems the body has an incredible ability to communicate with us our TRUE NEEDS if we learn to LISTEN TO IT.  However, along with learning to listen to my body, I have also had to learn how to push myself just enough to achieve growth, but not so much that I go too far.

To be honest with you, I’m thrilled about where I am in this life at this moment!  I’ve been reminded lately just how many friends I have in this world and I’m truly seeing the changes in myself that I have been waiting for.  When I started this journey, I was in 5x-6x clothing and desperately needed to stop squeezing into size 58 pants and justwp-1491073063214.jpg accept that I was breaking into the 60s.  Today, I am easily wearing 3x clothing and able to get myself into size 48 jeans.

One of the most discouraging thoughts that kept me at my weight was my perception of the amount of time it would take to be the weight I wanted to reach.  When I would think of how the process would take years to finally reach my goal, the whole task looked a lot like trying to scale a mountain with no climbing gear (not that the gear would have held much at 450 pounds).  Looking back on these thoughts today, I could easily regret choosing to remain in that state for so long given how many daily increases I experience to my quality of life with each new pound I lose.  I fit in chairs again, I have no fear of the waitress sitting me at a booth rather than a table, showering is easier, using the toilet is easier, I can see my underwear in the mirror, I can tie my shoes anywhere, I can go enjoy my life without losing my breath at parks or even the grocery store, I can go to a concert without fear of fitting into the seats and crowding my friends with my body, and I have even seen a few more personal changes with my body 😉 !

If you tell yourself that you can’t do something, you won’t.  If you don’t start a journey because it feels impossible, you’ll never get to where you want to be.  If you jump onto a hype-filled train and try achieving the impossible, you’ll eventually get dizzy and end up confused on the side of a train wreck.  However, I’ve proven over the past 6 or so months that you can achieve BIG things by taking one step at a time.

For now, though, it’s back to taking my life back…

  • September 11, 2016: 450+pounds
  • Today: 336.8 pounds
  • Total loss  113.2 pounds (42.4% of my total excess body weight)

Find me on social media:

Transitions

Greetings everyone!  The weather can’t seem to make up its mind here in the beautiful Ozarks!  We have had warm days, storms, snow, tornados, and extremely cold days!  Mother Nature is in turmoil and she is taking out her moodiness on the Ozarks.  Each new day seems to be directly connected to her every whim as her bipolar mood swings rock on a pendulum with no predictable or sustainable pattern.

Friday was the final day of Phase One of the Slique in 60 challenge.  There has been no leader board, so I have no idea where I fell in the rankings yet.  It is my hope that they will announce the winners soon!  However, for now, I will share my results:wp-1489638341173.png

Weight:  378.8 – 348.6
Waist:  67.5 – 62
Chest:  55 – 52
Hips:  58 – 56
Right quad:  36 – 34
Left quad:  35 – 33
Right calf:  22 – 22
Left calf:  21.5 – 21
Right bicep:  21 – 19
Left bicep:  20 – 18.5

There will be 12 winners in Phase 1.  These 12 winners will be the top 2 people from each division with the largest total body transformations based on both pounds and inches lost.  There are 6 different divisions based on gender and age (Women 18-35, Women wp-1489638321645.jpg36-50, Women 50+, Men 18-35, Men 36-50, and Men 50+).  I fall into the first age bracket for men:  18-35.  Winners of Phase 1 will receive a $200 Young Living product credit, a Select 30 Oil Collection, and an Apple Watch 2.  All in total, these prizes carry an approximate retail value of about $1000!  For me, the $500 set of oils and the $200 product credit are the most exciting!

Monday started Phase 2 of the weight loss competition and it will all end on May 11, 2017.  This phase of the competition is the big one for me as they are only giving awards to the very top total body transformation for each of the six divisions.  The top overall winners from their division will be awarded:  an Apple Watch 2, a Premier Aroma Collection, and $3,000!   The grand prizes come to an approximate retail value of $6030.84.wp-1489638325868.jpg

As you can see, the stakes are higher and I have a lot of incentive to kill this fat as fast as possible over the next two months!  During the first phase of the competition, I walked 3-5 miles every day as I worked to shed these excess pounds.  For this phase, I have joined a local gym and have added the elliptical and lifting weights to my arsenal of tools to help me win that $3000 and the $2000 set of oils!

Before I end today, I wanted to switch gears and share that this last few weeks have been completely chaotic.  However, over the past few days, wp-1489638486793.pngmy wife and I got thrown a curve ball we couldn’t have seen coming.  On Sunday night, our dog began to cry as we attempted to go to bed.  My wife stayed awake with him all night Sunday night, but things only continued to get worse over Monday and Tuesday. It became painfully obvious that our beloved dog, Magnum, was preparing to make his exit from this world.

It was with overwhelming sadness that I shared on Facebook this morning that Magnum died during the night.  My wife shared that Magnum clung to her side as he came closer and closer to taking his final breath.  Having no kids, Magnum has been our shared responsibility over the past five years and his passing has been surprisingly difficult as we experience a complex mixing of conflicting emotions with his passing.  We appreciate all of our friends, family, and readers that took the time to grieve with us in our loss.  He was the meanest, cute dog you will ever meet, but he loved his family and friends.  Who knew a dog could impact your daily life so much?

For now, though, it’s back to taking my life back…

Find me on social media:

Destroying the Root of my Weight Problem

It’s been a difficult, but illuminating, week for me.  I began to lose the faith.  As I wp-1487178569811.pngcelebrated my 100th pound gone, I was overtaken by an overwhelming feeling of depression.  If you have been following me, I experienced a similar depression after the loss of my 75th pound.  Back then, I concluded that I was experiencing discouragement due to the fact that the man in the mirror looked the same.  Unless I utilized before and after pictures, I was unable to see the results of losing 75 pounds.  While I believe that was somewhat accurate for my point in the journey, I believe that I missed a much larger issue and I was faced to confront it this week.

Way too many non-tracked meals were consumed this week and I found myself fully smoking again as I trudged deeper and deeper into the darkness of depression.  While I should be experiencing joy and celebration, I was feeling isolated and alone.  Failure overshadowed the very tangible experience of success that I was having.  Unfortunately, for the first part of the week, I didn’t even question it.  I just went along with the FEELINGS that were clouding my mind.

It wasn’t until I had a few walks alone that I began to do some serious reflection and begin to ask the MOST IMPORTANT question:  WHY?  Why am I feeling this way in the face of such incredible success?   I wish I could say that this time of much-needed reflection was triggered by knowledge and education of psychology, but I can’t.  My saving grace came to me through a song:  You Make Me Brave by Bethel Music.  I had heard the song before, but never really HEARD the song until the lyrics penetrated my spirit and the fact that I was identifying with the song made me listen to it on repeat for the rest of my walk.

It was on the second day of walking to this song that I began to ask what parts of the song struck me so strongly and why the song was speaking to me so powerfully.  The first part that stuck out was the chorus:

As Your love, in wave after wave
Crashes over me, crashes over me
For You are for us
You are not against us

The other part of the song that was speaking strongly to me came later in the song:

You make me brave
You make me brave
You call me out beyond the shore into the waves
You make me brave
You make me brave
No fear can hinder now the love that made a way

You make me brave
You make me brave
You call me out beyond the shore into the waves
You make me brave
You make me brave
No fear can hinder now the promises you made

So, why?  Why were these lyrics striking a chord with me so strongly?  I FEEL UNLOVEABLE!  I FEEL UNWORTHY!   Wait… I thought I conquered these demons when I began this journey!  I thought that my overcoming these demons was the very thing that had empowered my success?!  So why in the world am I relating to these lyrics now after I have made SO MUCH PROGRESS?!

It was then that I began to realize that I, despite my training, silently thought that I would begin to experience a renewed mindset… a new self-esteem… a new view of myself… if I were to lose the weight and become the type of person that I have always wanted to be.  I would become NORMAL!  These subconscious thoughts were based on an idea that my weight causes my mental issues and that getting rid of the weight would cause some sort of revolution in my mind and I would be a happier person with a totally different mindset.

With each passing goal, with each passing day, I am physically becoming the man that I want to be.  I see me growing and changing and have NO REASON to not believe that this change will only continue.  However, my mental me… the REAL me… is the same.  Unchanged.

I’ve known for several days I would HAVE to post about this because I KNOW there will be others that must hear this:  LOSING WEIGHT WON’T MAKE US HAPPIER.  LOSING WEIGHT WILL NOT SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS.  If I continued to allow this subconscious expectation to persist, the discouragement would lead to the unraveling of everything else as I would be forced to resign myself to the fact that I am somehow CURSED and nothing I do will change that.

But NOTHING could be further from the truth!

 I have said on here over and over again that the MENTAL journey of weight loss has been wp-1488825772117.pngthe most difficult part of this change.  I feel myself growing and I feel myself changing… I’ve even posted about it.  If I my mind were an overgrown plot of land, I have been hacking away at overgrowth and vines for months.  There’s no way that my mindset has remained unchanged.  However, this week, I found a ROOT by finding that subconscious expectation.  Now, I have to deal with that root.  When the root is gone, the plant is gone.  If the root were to remain, the full plant could come back in time.

In my work, I often work with juveniles that have sexually offended.  I ALWAYS have to teach them that treatment is NOT a process that makes the temptation or thoughts go away.  Treatment is learning how to control thoughts and behaviors and LIVE the life they need to live ON PURPOSE.  By living a life of control, they can become people of integrity and character rather than allowing themselves to become a sexual predator.  It is their choices and behaviors that define them… not the poison that was introduced to their lives through past experiences that introduced the sexual crap to their lives that now strongly impacts their thoughts and behaviors.

Now, I am having to learn that, too.  By learning to control my thoughts and my behaviors, I am choosing to live a life that is DIFFERENT from the person that I have always thought myself to be!  This process is NOT A CURE!  I cannot be CURED from being me!

Even as I write this, I feel as if I am revisiting a topic that I have already discussed so many times.  However, I hope this serves to show others that THIS IS A PROCESS!  We become who we are over time.  Throughout the years, we forge our identities and the ways that we view ourselves.  It takes TIME and HARD WORK for those identities to change, but the physical state of our bodies are but a symptom of the mental issues that exist; not a cause.  As we move through this process, we MUST address the mental issues that have existed and allowed for the symptom of our weight to get so far out of control.  It is IMPERATIVE that we not confuse the process.

Does this fix it?  Am I back on solid ground?  Not entirely.  There have been, and may always be, times that I am unable to see the truth through the cloudiness and fog of my imperfect brain.  However, I have reached out to my spouse and a few select friends.  These people are my Truth Keepers.  During times where I can’t see the truth through my fog, wp-1488825906318.pngthey are the ones that light the way back to truth and keep it safe during those times that I forget it.  It will take time and persistence before the lies that plagued my reality have less control in my mind.  Until now, my mind has been their kingdom… their breeding ground.  It has been in my mind that these lies have bred themselves and taken such a stronghold that they crippled my life and pushed me to the edge of disability.  Today, I am purposefully embracing the journey of taking control back from these lies.  This won’t be an easy process, but We CAN do this!  We CAN win!  We CAN live our lives on purpose!

For now, though, it’s back to taking my life back…

  • September 11, 2016: 450+pounds
  • Today: 348.6 pounds
  • Total loss  101.4 pounds (37.9% of my total excess body weight)

Find me on social media: