Behold Them!

Well, not so much "them" as me!

Yesterday I had one of those surreal days where everyone I saw remarked on my weightloss.

At work, I have to wear an ugly maroon tuxedo, so it's sort of hard for my co-workers to see the difference cause at this point I've lost 45 lbs and I'm still swimming in the same uniform because I'm waiting to replace it till I absolutely have to. Well I got in today and everyone was hanging out in their street clothes and I had my hair back and everyone's jaws dropped cause I guess my face is more defined and I was wearing more form fitting clothing. It was the talk of the town all day. It felt really good to get encouragement from my co-workers and to have them comment on how far I've come in my journey since I really have been sticking with it. 

I've also noticed that when I finish giving a tour, I get tips almost every time. I used to get tipped once every few days and now it's almost every single tour with the exception of school groups. My tour hasn't changed-just my body. I'm the same person giving the same tour, just 45 lbs thinner. I know I'm reaping the benefits now, but there's an aspect of this that makes me a bit mad at the way society works. Does anyone else think about this stuff? I'm really bothered by it. I hated the way I looked before but I still loved MYSELF/was proud of the work that I did and I think it's really sad that this kind of thing can make such a drastic difference in the way people see you/respect you professionally. 

Anyways, I went over to one of my best friend's houses to play video games and hang out last night and we happened to be riding the same train on the way there from our separate workplaces. He said he did a double take when he saw me (even though he's seen me steadily throughout this process). He said that the difference was very marked in my face and of course the rest of me as well. He has been really supportive of me this whole time, so I was shocked that I surprised him since he always sees me. 

The point of this blog is to express how awesome it feels to have people take notice of your progress, especially when you feel like things are slowing down or when you feel yucky about yourself despite your progress. I know that most of these people loved and respected me before the weightloss, but I also wanted to ask all of you about whether "weight" profiling still bothers or frustrates any of you? It makes me very uncomfortable and I know it's something that I cannot control, so I should just let it go... but it makes me so sad. Being fat doesn't mean you're dumb or worthless, or that you're any worse at your job than anyone else (unless you physically can't perform what's asked of you). Anyone have thoughts or ways you've been able to get over this aspect of accepting the changes in your body?

Motivational Thinking: I Have Many Skills

There are things I've started to tell myself to stay on track when things get hard or food gets tempting. In the past, being a stickler about having to do the same thing every day has caused me to lose large amounts of weight in the beginning, but resulted in a failure later on when I'm not able to continue measuring up to my own incredibly high standards. After all, no two days are the same, so if you limit yourself to certain behaviors performed in an exact order every day, there's only so long you can carry on before you start to feel trapped by the process. The key difference here is that I've been educating myself on how to be more active and how to supplement the Nutrisystem program so that if I do have to adjust, I have more options for strategies and solutions at my finger tips. This time around, I'm allowing myself to be more flexible and adopting a "slow and steady wins the race" mentality so that I can focus on lasting life-style changes rather than yo-yoing down so fast that I fail to maintain the weightloss and shoot up higher than I was in the first place. It's the difference between Jedi and Sith training.

So without further ado, here are some of my go-to motivational mantras:

• You can sleep in, but then you have to go to the gym after work and work twice as hard.
• You never regret going to the gym, but you do regret not going.
• If you want to eat off of your specific diet plan, then PLAN how you're going to do it so that you're not undoing the hard work you've done. On these "indulgence" days, you MUST go to the gym. 
• If you're dreading your typical boring workout, you don't have to do it. BUT! You do have to go to the gym and take a class.
• If you have a setback, let it go and move forward. You're not going to undo a mistake by harping on the past. The only thing that will undo a setback is what you DO in the present and plan to do in the future. 
• What do we say to the god of giving up?

Buy this print on Society Six

Those are just a few of the sentiments I've been using to push myself through rough spots. If you have more that you use to keep your motivation up, please feel free to post them in the comments!