Thin Blog

Archive for the ‘Motivation’ Category

The holidays are here again and you fell off the diet wagon again. Now you are looking for a way to get back on that diet wagon and really get serious about losing some weight. The first thing that you have to do is to stop beating yourself up over having a binge fest over the holidays. You cannot change one thing that you did or ate in the last few days. You can’t change the past, you can only move on and try to be better in the future. The 100 pound question is “what exactly is better?” If “better” for you is to lose weight that is great, but how long have you been doing this “better” thing?

If you have had trouble trying to diet and lose those pounds then let’s stop for a moment from beating ourselves up over trying to be “better.” We are what we are and if we desire to lose weight we have to stop thinking we live on a ranch somewhere secluded away from work, life and food. We need to look at what is in our life and learn to deal with what we have. If you have a hectic work schedule then you need to stop trying to lose weight around your work schedule. If you know you have to work late, then get up earlier to exercise which may mean you have to go to bed earlier. If you can’t find a healthy place to eat lunch, than start planning on bringing a healthy lunch. If you are using your schedule as an excuse from losing weight then you are really just making excuses.

If you do not have the ability to go to a gym during the day then buy a piece of equipment and stick it in your home. If you do not have the money to buy equipment then just get a pair of sneakers and go for a walk. If you are having a hard time losing weight then the answer may not be just another failed diet, maybe the answer is just a lack of motivation and mediocrity. If you really want to lose weight, and have no medical condition, the only one stopping you from losing weight is yourself.

Whew!!! Those were some pretty extreme words that were just spoken and it is hoped that your feelings were not hurt, but the truth remains that if you want to lose weight then you and only you can make it happen. You are not on some game show and you really are only in competition with yourself. You need to take a moment and reflect on what it is you really want out of the goal of weight loss. You need to stop accepting failure and stop expecting more than can be delivered.

As you move forward from this moment in time it is expected for you to stop beating yourself up and start to accept the need for self love. You need to stop being so filled with a lack of self tolerance and start to think about what will work for your own individual weight loss. You do not need to be in a rush and just because you want to lose weight does not make it an all or nothing. Set a goal for 1.5 pounds of weight loss a week. That is a doable goal and one that can be easily achieved and tracked with the use of FitDay, which is a wonderful weight loss program for your computer. Setting an achievable and measureable goal is better than just saying you will lose some weight.

As this holiday season starts and ends accept yourself for what you are and if you desire better, then you possess the power to make yourself better. Do not get side tracked by poor goals or with perceived competition with your girlfriends. Use your friends as tools that when used properly can help the situation. With the goal of a pound or two a week, and tracking that goal, you will be able to build that needed motivation for a successful weight loss journey.

Weight loss is not a destination; it is a journey that will take the rest of your adult life. By embracing your failures you can improve your future. By pushing aside defeat you can create and maintain motivation. By accepting your shortcomings and holiday binges then you are on the right road for reality in weight loss. In that reality you will have up days and down days but as long as you have another day you are still in the game. Hang in there, realize you are human. Accept the fact the only competition is yourself and unless you can embrace that competition you may never reach your goals.


You can achieve weight loss if only you were to accept the fact that you are human and that a diet is not an all or nothing event. When you reach that day of your ideal weight you will realize that it had to be a life style change to make it happen. Once you achieve that weight loss you will realize that to prevent weight gain you need to continue your “diet”. At that point your “diet” had better be a lifestyle because most people cannot live on a diet for the rest of their forever. Most people who lose the weight and keep it off are those who made fundamental changes in their behavior and now to keep that weight off they need to keep going to maintain that weight. To maintain that lower weight you better be living in such a way that you will be happy. If you are not happy with how you LOST the weight you will slip and that slip will cause you to gain all the weight back again.

Skip the diet, stop beating yourself up, make reasonable goals for your weight loss, stop being in competition with your neighbor, friend and especially yourself. If you want to lose weight make the change, love yourself for yourself and stop looking at the calendar. Weight loss will happen when you make it happen and you will not make it happen until you are really ready to make it happen.

I watched the season premiere of The Biggest Loser Families tonight and once again I am inspired.  I have been trying to lose weight for well over one year now and I have been able to drop 30 pounds.  I was up to a 42 pound loss but vacation and my computer crashing gave me the excuse to put more of the weight back on again. I have been watching The Biggest Loser for a few years now and every year I love to see the contestants go from being overweight to being fit and trim.  In previous years I got all motivated at the start of the season and would lose weight.  Before the end of the season the effort always seemed to just putter out and stop.  This time however it is different.  Last season I was motivated and actually lost over 40 pounds and now that the show is on the air again I can feel the motivation pouring through my veins.  The vacation is over and the gym bag is packed for the trip to the gym tomorrow morning.  I now feel ready to drop another 30 pounds by the season finale.

What I like about The Biggest Loser is that they do not pitch any gimmicks to lose weight.  It is an in your face show about getting your head straight and pulling your butt in line.  The Biggest Loser is not selling some fad diet or diet pill B.S.  Sure they have their sales pitches but those are for products that actually work, like water or lean types of meat.  The point is that on this show they live the philosophy of I Choose Thin.  Jillian Michaels is my favorite and that may because of my years in the United States Marine Corps.  She is a no-nonsense trainer who appears to take an interest in the people she works to help.  She yells and screams and provides distinct direction to those lucky few that make it onto the show.

>Jillian helped Shane lose 126 pounds!

If you desire to lose weight and are missing a little thing called motivation then I Choose Thin recommends you to watch The Biggest Loser.  The show is honest and straight forward about losing weight and that is a breath of fresh air in the diet world.  If you doubt this advice than go watch just two episodes and you will be hooked.  If you are not hooked on the show then maybe you really are not too serious about losing weight.  The show is all about the correct way to lose weight and that is through hard work and education.  All weight loss excuses are left at the door and the results are astounding and it is all done through hard work, motivation and education.  Give the show a chance and you may enjoy it.

Having to lose weight has to be more of an ongoing event than something that you just do to get done.  Losing weight the correct way does not pay attention to dates or to events.  If you want to lose weight then you need to want to get it done for the correct reasons.  Trying to lose weight for a reunion next month is more of a joke than a sincere weight loss attempt.  If you need to lose 20 pounds fast then chances are you have either been on a series of fad diets in your life and that at the end of each and every year you are slowly getting larger and larger.  The “joke” is the reality that if you think you can drop a few pounds all of your weight loss issues will be over.  This belief is further from the truth than you realize and it is also dangerous to your very health and well being.  If you start taking diet pills or some fad diet the end result will NOT be weight loss.  The date that travels beyond the diet pills or fad diet will find you only heavier than you are now.  At the ultimate end of all the fad weight loss ideas is the sad reality that your body only puts on more pounds than you when you started the diet.  This is not opinion, it is fact and it is happening to you now and has been going on for years.  There you sit with a belly that is nothing you ever planned on having.  Right here and right now you need to stop looking for a quick weight loss fix and just decide that you are going to be better at losing weight.  You are not going to just stop eating carbohydrates or only eat raw food in a legitimate weight loss attempt.  You need to change more than your diet, you need to change the entire way you look at yourself.

When you see yourself in the mirror you need to respect what you see.  You need to make the choice that from here on out it will be different and you are going to make better choices.  But what are those choices?  Sure we could rattle off some great meal plans and there are another million websites out here that provide more recipes than you could ever eat.  The point is that you need to change all of the approaches to your health.  You need to start educating yourself on what is good to eat and what is bad to eat and in what quantities does all this happen.  You need to gain the knowledge that will foster your ability to be able to make better food choices.  You also need to get up and get moving and do some form of exercise.  No matter how often you watch weight loss television shows you need to increase your activity.  You need to just get started and you better do it soon before it is too late.     

Spend a few days searching the world for knowledge and decide what diet or food plan is best for your life.  You must decide based on how you will spend the rest of your life because the ultimate success in a weight loss program is to never gain the weight back again.  When you stop the fad diet and resume your normal life is where fad diets become a failure.  Fad diets achieve results but sooner or later those results vanish.  Education, knowledge, effort and exercise are the foundation for success in weight loss.  The success of a diet is never actually achieved because it is so easy to slip back into obesity.  Stay away from fad diets because true weight loss never really ends, but fad diets always end.  

If your husband is in the military and you are gaining weight you may need to lose a few pounds to continue to fit into the “crowd”.  If you’re a guy and your wife is in the military while you are overweight then you really need to start thinking about dropping some of that weight.  If your branch of service is the Navy or Air Force the need to lose the weight may not be as essential to that as being in the Army.  If you are a dependant of someone in the United States Marine Corps and you are starting to look rotund next to your spouse you really need to consider some form of weight loss. If you are worring there is some cheating going on what can you do to help prevent it?   The reason for this is not because of the trophy effect your spouse will have with you standing next to them but because of the fact that your very health and also your relationship may be in jeopardy.  If you are an officer’s wife this information is about six times more relevant than that of an enlisted spouse.

The reason why you are feeling so self conscious of your weight is because most sections of the Armed Forces stress physical fitness and when you are not fit you are a standout.  If your spouse is in the Marine Corps and in the infantry and is fit and trim and you are 40 pounds overweight you run the risk of looking frumpy.  As your spouse travels the world it may be unfair that you get to stay home and tend to the daily chores.  If this is your life it is easy to get lost in the routine of running the daily schedule.  The problem is that as your spouse is traveling the world his/her eyes may start to wander with all of the eye candy that populates this planet.  If you do not take care of yourself you may not only stop being eye candy you may just end up being a “sucker”.

You really should not be sitting at home tending to the kids and the family van and not be taking care of yourself.  If you are not doing something for yourself to lose weight or just get healthy chances are you blame someone else for your current situation.  Sadly though, after all of the blame has been tossed around you will find yourself tossed of the base and not being a dependant at all anymore because you were dumped.

This is not to say that all spouses are cheaters or that you are being cheated on at all.  What we hope you will do is just start to spend some time on yourself.   The reality of it all is that if you do not take care of yourself how can you do a good job taking care of someone else?  How can you feel sexy in bed if you do not even feel comfortable by what you see in the mirror?  How can you hope to preserve your relationship if you are not willing to preserve your own well being first?  We want you to notice that we are speaking about the generic term of spouse and not specifically male or female.  The sex does not matter because the desires are there for either sex.  Also in today’s world a spouse needs to always ensure their mate is sexually satisfied or the temptation of side sex is much more possible.
In closing you need to get into shape and lose weight because it will keep you around longer.  Not only will losing weight will make you healthier and keep you alive longer, it may also keep your relationship alive longer also.   If you get into shape and lose those pounds your spouse may stick around longer also.  If you can’t move around in bed to satisfy your mate your bedroom will lose the glitter of those early days.  As time goes on there is no reason why your bed has to become dull and if it dies it may be because of your weight.  If your weight makes you shuddder and wince as you pass the mirror then you and you alone can make that change.  That change only needs to begin today and it does not mean that it all has to happen today.

Babies are not conceived and born in a day so do not stress out if you are dealing with baby weight gain because weight loss takes time.  You just need to get started and that is all that matters today.  Tomorrow is not here yet so you just have today.  If you can always get through today, the tomorrows will take care of themselves.

Everyday is a challenge for me.  I never before realized how many times a day food comes into my realm of choices that have to be made.  Some days I am offered candy and pastries and other sorts of food that do little but expand the waistline.  Today was one of those days!

I awoke this morning to a dozen fresh jelly donuts on the kitchen table that were beckoning me.  When I got to work there were candies piled in the break room and pizza in the afternoon.  All of these choices came at me so fast that now that I look back on the day I am slightly amazed that I was able to resist all of the cravings.  Pizza was the hardest to resist.

I have come to realize that even though today I chose to not eat the fat pills I know that it would not have destroyed my quest to lose the extra weight.  Maybe I have turned a corner and I will be able to control my will power and stop eating all of the bad choices so often.  Today was a good day!

As I sit here now I just remembered that butterfinger candy bar stashed way back in the freezer.  I guess the day is not over yet!!!  Losing weight is not the easiest thing I have ever done.  In fact I think I got through boot camp for the U.S.M.C. easier.

Butterfinger? Will power?  GRRRRRR!!!  The battle continues….