What I have learned from 1000 days of logging (Part 2)

donnam40

Do this for yourself – not someone else or some big life event

If you do this for someone else you’ll never really embrace the change because you don’t own it. The choice to change has to be your own, not anyone else’s. And if you want to lose weight for some big event, chances are once that event has been and gone, you’ll put it back on because you met your deadline. This goes back to change being a lifestyle. Think about your goals – make them about health, wellbeing and fitness rather than losing weight for a wedding or reunion. My goals are to maintain half marathon fitness all of the time, manage my RA and to feel good in my own skin. During my weight loss faze they were more specific – 500g – 1kg of loss a week or a faster sprint on the treadmill.

Everyone’s got time

One of the things I hate the most is people saying to me “I don’t know how you get the time to exercise”. I have the same 24 hours, I work full time, have a house and a couple of kids (albeit grown up now). But I have exercised, even when they were small, using the crèche at the gym, and squeezed my commitments in around a variety of life’s challenges. It’s about making exercise a priority. I have been known to get up at 5am to squeeze a gym session or a run in. I will go for a run at lunchtime if life’s getting in the way. I just make it happen and you can too!

Maintaining is hard

It’s hard to get the maintaining side right. It can be easy to slip back into old habits once you’ve reached goal. This comes back to goals – make sure you have a goal in mind still so that you are still working towards something.

I could say lots more but I think this is enough for now.

Remember, the only time you really fail is when you stop trying.

Kamnikar64

Loved your post(s). I keep failing, but I also keep coming back to try again. Thanks for focusing my mindset.

ewhip17

donnam40 wrote: »

My goals are to maintain half marathon fitness all of the time......

This comes back to goals – make sure you have a goal in mind still so that you are still working towards something.

Love this post, but these two things spoke to me in particular. I really like this way of thinking. As I've lost a large amount of weight, the questions about "what's next" keep popping up in my brain, and this method of moving forward is really compelling. Thanks.