Be nice to yourself - it'll help! Progress Pic

Happy New Year MFP peeps!!

After the holidays, I found myself getting very down and hard on myself because of how poorly I ate throughout those few weeks. I made NO progress whatsoever, and even put on a few pounds. Now, I know it's the Holidays and that happens to most people, but even before the Holidays, I had hit a plateau and hadn't seen any progress in a while, so it made it that much more difficult to see the jump in poundage when I got on the scale after New Years.

I'm writing this post because I know I'm not the only person that felt like that heading into the New Year. I started searching for some motivation to get me back on track and came across a picture of me from NYE last year…when I looked at that picture, I immediately put it next to a picture of myself from this NYE and got a little teary. I realized I was being WAY too hard on myself. I have come such a long way in the past year in so many ways and I couldn't believe that I let a few weeks of being a bit looser with my eating habits start to make me feel like I had failed.

It has been a long weight-loss journey for me - I started with MFP in the summer of 2011, lost about 38 lbs, proceeded to gain it all back throughout 2012 and started fresh again in the beginning of 2013. Since then, I have lost about 42 lbs. I still have a ways to go (I'd like to loose about 24 more), but I realized how hard we can be on ourselves without ever really allowing ourselves to take in the win and feel proud of the progress we HAVE made instead of focusing on what we haven't done or how much further we have to go. I'm constantly criticizing myself for everything - my arms are still so huge, my butt is wide and flat, I have back rolls, blah blah blah (the list could go on forever), but what is that doing to my motivation? The answer? KILLING IT. Who wants to keep pushing forward when the voice inside your head is telling you you'll never be good enough anyways? So friends, I'm determined to STOP IT. Stop the internal berating and focus on the progress I am making - whether it's something as simple as choosing not to have that second cookie, vowing to enter every bite into MFP, or something as big as spending an hour at the gym today. CONGRATULATE YOURSELF ON THE LITTLE THINGS PEOPLE!! They come a lot more often than the big milestones and it will make the time in between those milestones go that much smoother and quicker. Also, tell yourself at least one thing a day that you like about yourself or point out something you notice you have made progress on. For me, today I decided to focus on how much thinner my face looks. It made me feel really good about what I've done to this point

In light of my realization, I decided to post a progress pic. I had promised myself that I wouldn't post before and after pics until I had reached my goal, but my NYE epiphany made me realize how important it is to pat yourself on the back all along the way rather than beating yourself up until you hit that magic number. I know now that this will make the rest of this weight loss journey that much easier and more enjoyable. Hope you guys can feel the same way too!

Now, back on the bandwagon to shed this last 24 lbs!