Weight-loss is no joke, it’s damn hard to lose weight. I’ve been on this weight-loss journey unofficially since 2014, and I’ve fallen off the wagon more than a dozen times.
I started to post to Instagram, so that I could keep myself accountable. It was working for a bit, then it became a place where I’d only post my food and not my workouts or many progress pictures.
I wasn’t mentally prepared to make a change at the time, when you want to lose the amount of weight I want to lose. You’ve got to be all in, or it won’t work. I wasn’t ready to put in all the work, but I did clean up a lot of my diet.
I changed the size of plates that I was using, and started eating smaller portions with vegetables for every meal. I started to move more, and I’ve come a long way since than. It’s been an uphill battle most of the way, but I’m much more educated on food and exercise now.
In July 2016 I started my journey again, this time determined to make a change. It’s been six months officially since I started working out again, and I’m slowly starting to see some changes in my body. Some of my clothes are starting to fit better, my body is changing shapes.
The scale hasn’t changed much, it fluctuates back and forth between two to three pounds. I should consider that a small victory, but I’ve only been maintaining at this point and that’s not enough. I want to see the numbers drop, as difficult as it is I know I shouldn’t focus on the numbers. I should focus on how I look and feel, I need to push myself harder to get there no more excuses.
Today I was feeling especially good about myself, so I went and stepped on the scale. Unfortunately the same number from last week stared back at me. Instead of letting that make me feel defeated, because I know that I feel different. I decided to look onto all of my social medias for pictures of me before I started this whole process, like most people I want to be able to compare my pictures side by side… I wanted to see if I could notice a difference.
How I look and feel should mean more to me, than some number on a scale. What I didn’t realize until today was I’ve been subconsciously avoiding my picture being taken, or taking full body pictures. A large majority of my pictures are pictures of my kids, or other people etc. Almost all the pictures that I’m in my kids are with me, or there’s other people who I’m with that I’ve been able to hide how big I am.
It wasn’t exactly intentional, but I guess my subconscious mind convinced me to not let myself be photographed. I kept searching, and finally realized I’d probably have to settle for a picture than crop everyone out. I wanted to see how far I’ve come, so that I could use that as extra motivation.
When I started this health journey, I promised myself that I would document all aspects of it. So that I could use that for motivation as I go, and when I reach where I want to be I can look back on how far I came. The reality is I’m still not comfortable talking in videos, when I take a picture of myself I pick it apart…I’m definitely my biggest critic.
I need to get over that fear, and just do it. The truth is I follow a lot of people on health and weight-loss journeys on Instagram. They motivate me to keep going, what if they had said “No I won’t post because I don’t like where I am or how I look now”. That would take away some of my biggest motivators, people I follow for support and accountability.
When I follow someone for their weight-loss or even just their health journey, I want to see their good and the bad times. I want to see their struggles, and see how they over come them. I don’t want to just see “this was me before and this is me now”, I want to see how you got there because not everyone’s journey is the same.
People get caught up in wanting to post only a highlight reel, and where I am right now in my health journey that doesn’t help. I want to be able to follow someone who can share when their having a bad day, talk about bad food temptation, or even how they don’t feel like exercising but they go do it anyways. That’s much more inspirational than, someone who only posts their before and after picture.
Let’s all stop worrying about what negative things people could say about us, or what others will think. We should start posting more for ourselves, because I guarantee you once you get where you want to be you’ll want to look back at where you started. Keep going, you never know who you could be inspiring.