The Awesome Life: They Never Said It Would Be Easy, They Said It Would Be Worth It

My sister and trainer, Mel (check her out here) has been reading my blog and suggested I do a post on motivation. You should know that there's no quick fix, you need to work at it and it's going to be really hard sometimes.Even though I was not battling with alot of weight to lose, I was battling with some inner demons which I needed to overcome to have control of my weight.
I know so many others who have succeeded to change their minds and bodies and their journey's have definitely not been easy, infact it's been pretty damn tough at times but as the title of the post says, it's been worth it!
I know like so many others I've tried so many times to commit to healthy eating or an exercise plan, I have been 10kg's heavier than I am now, I lost those 10kg's doing a crash diet and slogging it out on the treadmill 5 times a week. I then went to put 9kg's on again in 6-12 months. There's a few reasons why I think failed, my diet was not maintainable, I was tired and run down from overdoing it cardio-wise but the main reason was because I lost motivation, plain and simple.

So I thought I'd share some of the things which kept and still keep me motivated:

Setting goals
This was something I'd never really done before. I always wanted to be smaller, weigh less, have a flatter stomach etc etc but had an ultimate goal that I wanted to acheive, something I could focus on. So this time I had my longterm goal, which was to be in best shape I could on our wedding day. Mel asked me to write it down as well as some short-term goals - daily, weekly and monthly goals.
Some of my short term goals included
- Getting through the day without eating chocolate/anything processed/insert any bad eating habit here
- Getting through a month without drinking alcohol
- Being able to lift a particular weight
- Running 3 km's without stopping (before I knew it I could run 8, 10 and just recently 14km's without stopping!)
The sense of acheivement I felt on just acheiving these smaller goals was a big boost to my motivation and kept me wanting more!

Having something or someone to be accountable to
Having a personal trainer is by far the best favour you can do for yourself. You can talk to them about your struggles and they will always be there as a source of motivation and encouragement and tough love when you need it most (well, the good ones anyway!).
Having a trainer also helped in other ways too, if I know I've paid X amount of dollars for that session, I'm damn well going to get out of bed and get my money's worth! And knowing said trainer is going to kick my butt twice as hard if I back out or don't turn up, well I'm going to turn up and do what she says!
It doesn't have to be a trainer though, could be a friend or work colleague that you turn to when things get hard, needs to be someone who's going to give you tough love though!

Something that costs nothing is keeping a food diary where I write down EVERYTHING I put into my mouth so I'm accountable for the cheats. I have lapsed abit at this lately so will take my own advice and start again today!

Starting this blog less than a week ago is also helping me stay accountable - I gotta practice what I preach! And it's working!

Surrounding yourself with positive influences
I joined Mel's running crew where I was able to meet other like-minded people to share and swap stories with, huge motivation booster when you're around others with similar goals. Have made some great friends out of it also.
I ditched the negative, jealous people in my life who were bringing me down.
I read magazines, articles, blogs and watched TV shows on health and fitness - heaps of inspiration and motivation here.
Treat myself to some new workout gear - amazing how much more exciting a workout can be with a some cute new gear!

So abit about how I'm feeling at the moment...after 2 weeks around the wedding where I was far too busy to fit all my sessions in and hurting my ankle last week which resulted in 3 rest days, I've finally managed to get back to a full week of training this week. And feeling good!
It's also been a very stressful and busy week at work and have found myself craving chocolate almost every afternoon! I caved on Thursday and Friday, it was only a small amount but enough to leave me feeling crappy :-( So I'm making myself accountable by writing it down here!

Finally, thought I'd share some of the delicious clean meals I've munched on this past week:

Post workout oats with berries