365 days of living a healthy lifestyle!

Wow, 365 days… a whole year! Its crazy to know that I made it this far! I remember when I passed the 40 day mark and how proud I was of myself. Heh. Its been a long, hard road and nothing about this journey was easy. Anyone who thinks it happens over night is in for a world of hurt. It takes time and lots of lessons are to be learned along the way. Here are a few things I have learned from this year:

The first thing I learned is that food has become one of my biggest enemies. When I joined myfitnesspal, I realized how much I over ate. It was very shocking to see the type of food that I was eating on a daily basis. Nothing I ate was good for my body. Food has always been one of my biggest struggles and what I found to help me through this is to eat all the foods I love in moderation. Eventually, you come to a point to where you no longer crave bad foods and if you do, you realize what a mistake that was based off of what it does to your body. If you want to lose weight, start off by watching your food intake. That will ALWAYS be the key to your success.

The other challenge I faced is how lonely this journey can be. You have to live it, love it, breathe it… now when someone asks “how are you doing”, “whats new in your life”, all you have to talk about is working out, how many inches/pounds you lost, dieting, etc. In the end, one of the following things happen: 1.) They get tired of hearing the same *kitten*, 2.) You come off as vain cause all you have to talk about is yourself or 3.) All of your workout talk causes the other person to start dissing themselves. That was the hardest thing to endure is hearing all of these beautiful women bash themselves, its painful! I never paid attention before cause I was no better. Its the norm and I did the exact same thing. Its sad cause when you do try to stop hating on yourself only then do you realize how many women hate on themselves every, single, day. It breaks my heart! Eventually, I learned not to talk about my weightloss. It was hard at first cause everytime I lost a pound, went down a size, etc. I wanted to share my excitement but I had no one to tell. I had to learn how to save these moments and share them at the right time. It taught me how to be alone and how to be happy with having that moment all to myself. I had to encourage myself when times got tough and I basically learned how to be my own best friend. When you are so far away from family and friends and you're going through the hardest transition in your life, its gets lonely. I showed myself how to handle it on my own which was such a good lesson for me to learn. After I put myself through that unnecessary hardship, I learned how to reach out to the myfitnesspal community, joined fitness groups and talked about weightloss with people who had the same goals as me. I found myself being a lot more social then I was before. I can honestly say this is something I had never expected to go through but am so glad that I did because I learned a lot about myself.

The last thing I learned is how much working out has helped me emotionally. I never realized how much I kept everything in. I may have talked about my problems but could never let them go. Working out has taught me how to turn my pain into something positive. When I am upset or have had a bad day, I cannot wait to workout. I even look forward to it! Pushing yourself to go harder and faster all while pissed off helps relieve the stress! It makes you feel so much better mentally and emotionally. While you “workout” your problems you get the added bonus of gaining an amazing body! Its a win, win!

In the end, I’ve learned that it all comes down to finding a balance in your life. You will never have that perfect moment to workout and/or have enough money in the world to have the healthiest of foods. Its all about finding what works best for you. At first, it was all about losing weight and wanting to be “skinny” but then it turned into wanting to be healthy and learning to love myself. It really is all about wanting to live a healthy lifestyle, mind, body and soul! I love who I have become and am so glad that I decided to take that leap of faith. I’m not at all where I want to be but I so *kitten* proud of what I have accomplished! (Excuse my french)

I want to thank all of my family and friends for all of the encouragement and support! You are all so amazing and have helped me so much! I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for you. I also want to give a special thanks to my loving and caring husband. He’s been there for me since day one. His love and encouragement has always meant so much to me! Thank you babe for being by my side and helping me find a balance in life! I love you with all my heart!