The dying art of will power.

People always ask me: "Steve, how did you lose 40 pounds in 6 months?" I smile and
tell them: "I changed everything." They kind of look at me funny, so normally I'll
explain further like this: "I stopped eating all the crap, I started eating good food.
I stopped making excuses like 'I'll just have it this one time' and started telling
myself that if I didn't start now, I never would. I started exercising HARD. Pushing
my body. And when I wanted to quit, I kept going for an extra couple of minutes,
knowing that even though my body hurts, it won't kill me, and that extra 3 or 4 minutes
will benefit me greatly by forcing my body to up it's fitness level just to keep up."


Will power is a difficult thing to quantify. My definition of it is the ability to start
or continue things that we find less then pleasing, AND the ability to self-analyze in a
non-biased way. Self-critisizm without self-loathing is difficult, but necessary to
improve one's overall health.

Figuring out how much willpower you have is meaningless, because willpower is something you generate
by force of conviction, rather then having from birth or instilled by outside forces.

Those who you perceive to have more will power, many times, just have a higher (mental or physical)
threshold for pain. Likewise, willpower is the ability do things without worrying what
others are thinking. If you care that people will look at your fat while you are running
then you probably need to re-think your attitude, not your training schedule.

So how do we who have suceeded do it? You ask (and I see that question on here almost daily).

It has nothing to do with our technique, or our eating habits, or our workout regimen, those are
all results from the top level starting point. It has nothing to do with our support network or
who is doing what around us, at us, or too us, those are just external factors that can influence
day to day but never the totality of the process.
I believe with all my heart that having the willpower to begin, CONTINUE, and follow up with the program is THE unifying factor in any weight loss/health improvement program. With a strong conviction and follow through, you can accomplish it (and just about anything).
And when ever we say "I give up." or "I don't think I can do it any more",
we are just giving in to our base instincts and not using our higher brain function. This isn't to say
you can't stumble and "have a bad day", that's different, it's more to concede that something is difficult
and therefore "I just don't want to do it anymore.". Having a bad day is an error in judgment, but not a consession of defeat.

I hope people take this how I meant it to be seen. What I am trying to do is provide a good starting point for people that don't know where to begin, or feel like they have been trying and failing.

I put all of the onus on Me when I work out and eat. I have never once said, "my wife made me eat badly today" (jokingly I have, but I have also spoken to her about this, and she knows never to feel bad about suggesting someplace to eat). For you to succeed in this, you have to take all the responsibility. If you do that, you will realize nobody will need to tell you how to do this, you will already know, and when you succeed, you will also know that YOU did it! And let me tell you what: There is no better feeling in the world!

I hope this shines a light for at least one person out there.

Best of luck to all of you.

-Banks