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.
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:
- Facebook @250pounds2forever
with 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.
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.
36-50, 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 
my 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.
celebrated 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 
the 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.
they 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!
We have some very good news to share this week! We have been excited by the fact that my wife’s plateau has finally given a little bit and she officially lost her 50th pound. This accomplishment has been just out of reach for almost two months, so to see the scale FINALLY reflect a number that shows her progress has been exhilarating. We have both experienced frustration as she has struggled so long without losing anything on the scale. However, she struggled with temptations to give up on the changes we have made as it felt like her efforts have been in vain and she has been depriving herself of her favorite foods for no reason.
passed my fourth 25-pound goal! Today is day 171 of our journey towards improved health and, in less than six months, I have seen 100 pounds melt away!! I thought that I would cry when I reached this point, but that is not what I am feeling. I want to skip my adult responsibilities and CELEBRATE!!! I want to go play pool, head to a casino, watch a movie, or just see the people I love.
on a two-hour walk in shorts DURING THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY!!!! There are so many ways that I could view this weekend and I’ve probably viewed it from each of the different angles as the weekend progressed. As I have shared before, it is one’s mindset that creates the most significant impact upon how that individual proceeds into their future.
It also put me into an active neighborhood during the time that people are waking up and having their morning smoke.
his life that have come with losing weight. However, I may also be a human that enjoys a night on the town filled with choices that I don’t regularly make anymore. To me, it seems like a very dangerous place to walk. Maybe that is why so many fail at losing weight. Maybe it is safer and more effective to live one way or the other. I don’t have any answers, but I want to be me and I want to be free to make choices for myself without experiencing pressure that I am letting myself or anyone else down.
life makeover. Honestly, I have shut off some of my coping skills and have yet to find enough replacement coping skills to help me regulate everyday life without feeling tempted to return to old patterns. Well, today was no different. As I walked, I became discouraged about the endeavors that I have been making. Somewhere along the past few months, I internally started to feel silly about my blogging efforts. These thoughts came to life as my internal dialogue took on a relatively negative tone.
then stops, turns around and says, “As hard as it is, you’re really gonna make it. We’re rooting for you. You’re never gonna believe it, but we root for you every time you walk by!” Stunned, I think I said, “Thank you,” but I can’t be sure.
Good Lord, I can’t get enough of these beautiful weekends! I relish every minute outside in these absolutely gorgeous Spring… er… Winter days. I can’t even believe how that sentence needs to be typed. It’s WINTER and the temperatures got into the 80s yesterday! I would love to have a situation where I worked two days of the week and had the other five days off (and make the same paycheck… or more… of course!). I simply can’t get enough time to spend outside doing what I love the most: exploring nature and getting healthy!
led them to the jogging/running lifestyle! Given the content of my last blog post, you can bet your prized goat that I wanted to talk to them about SHOES and, boy, I found my way to the right people!
First, we went to Lake Springfield and hiked around the park for at least two hours. We may not have walked very far (three miles), but we did a lot of off-road hiking and A LOT of steep, large hills. The change up was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time! Our neighborhood has slight hills, but we can also choose how to take the worst ones. However, at the park, there was no foreknowledge of what was coming or how to take it… we just went. I was blown away at how far my body has come. I wasn’t nearly anything close to fast, but I did it without dying or having to stop for a break. I felt so empowered.
overcome with similar feelings of embarrassment and shame. We were daunted and, honestly, believed that we would be laughed out of the store by the people that really should be in there. So, as I walked to the building, I decided that I was going to document our journey. This blog has been started by a man that knows very little about what he is doing and I have been learning in front of you readers from the moment I launched the site. If I feel daunted and silly going into a store targeting runners, I know others that find their way here will experience those feelings, too!
had ever been in a shoe store where there were NO boxes of shoes on the showroom floor! While we were there, our sales agent evaluated our feet, examined our stride and detailed how a shoe needs to fit our feet to meet our specific needs! After this very invasive feet interaction, she began retrieving specific shoes that met the criteria we had discussed. She accepted our feedback and retrieved items we requested, but both of us ended up going with the recommendation from our salesman as they truly felt the best on our fe
et! It was a new and empowering experience as our sales agent educated us about the characteristics of a walking shoe that will meet our needs and improve our walking experience. Our sales lady was so observant that she confirmed something I had began suspecting, but never had evaluated, for a few years – I have one leg that is shorter than the other! She also found out I have been wearing a size 12 shoe and I should be wearing a size 10.5!
making the progress that I have been making! Coming from a guy that has NEVER spent more than $30 – $40 on a pair of shoes, I can tell you that I experienced an entirely different type of step today. The wonderful pair of shoes I had been wearing weigh than twice what these shoes weigh and feel nowhere near as comfortable for walking! After getting home, I took a quick 1.3 mile walk in them so that I could get an immediate feel for them. I literally felt like I was gliding as the cushion, which adds to my height substantially, absorbed every step and my feet began to develop a new relationship with the harsh pavement that has been beating the hell out of my feet and ankles!
passing morning and the beautiful songs of the birds in our neighborhood that continue to remind me that warmer weather is on the way. The added activity of squirrels and bunnies also help to create the scenes that reassure my soul that the chilly days of Winter are limited.
involved in the process of a step actually is. HOLY MOSES! Learning to lose weight or how to exercise should come with its own Bachelor’s degree. Seriously!
in on the halfway point of the first phase of the weight loss competition. I know I just started with Young Living, but everything that I have used from them has been amazingly effective. The money-back guarantee and a weight loss product from them were too much for me to resist… especially when you look at the awards for winning the competition!
250pounds2forever 