New Year, New Perspective. I give my seminars twice a week. In them, I ask people why they came.  Without fail, the top three answers are to lose weight, feel better, and get healthy.

But then I ask them, “what would losing weight, feeling better, and being healthier do for them.”  I ask them to list the things they would do or how they would change if those things happened. Inevitably, they say they would have more self-confidence, self-discipline, self-control, self-esteem.  They would feel relief about health issues and they would have a longer better quality of life.  Some people say liberated, freedom, lighter, happier, more energy.  So really, isn’t that the actual goal? Of course, it is.

People always have a number goal or a size goal in their heads, and that is legitimate and necessary, but when the scale stops moving, people forget why they went on this program.  When that scale stops moving, they think they are failing because the number goal is not coming as fast as they wanted or think they deserve. They don’t see themselves as doing anything worthy if that scale isn’t validating them and their now distorted view of what their original goal actually was.

The other night I got to see a brand-new perspective be born right before me. I asked myself why I picked 150 pounds as my goal. It was a place that I was very comfortable physically, so that was my goal. I got there, I held it for 4 years, had some personal issues, gained some back.  This 2-year journey of gaining some back has helped me go through tons of personal growth and brought me 1000’s of aha moments.  Through this journey, I have slowly become more self-confident, learned true self-discipline and control without doing the diet, developed a new positive relationship with food and learned some great tools to help me deal with my emotional eating. 

I still have ten pounds on and think about it daily, but today I thought about the fact that my true reason for wanting to do the diet had nothing to do with that number.  All the things I listed above I have accomplished. OMG, why wasn’t I giving myself credit for all the strides I have made? Why didn’t I see these accomplishments sooner? How could I have missed them?

I missed them because I wasn’t looking for what I did right, I just wanted to know what I still needed to fix.  I missed them because I didn’t understand that my goal of reaching 150 pounds was actually just a small piece of the puzzle! In all actuality, the diet and my journey helped me change my slave mentality to food and find myself.  The number represented so many things but because I was so miserable about my weight, I didn’t stop and look at what losing the weight really meant to me.

I am free from food addictions.  I beat myself up way less than I ever did before, and for women, that is not an easy task.  I get past my mistakes so much quicker, forgive myself for not being perfect (because no matter what anyone says, I think I can achieve perfection, LOL) and just strive to be better than what I was yesterday.

My challenge to everyone on my program, and to whoever is reading this, is to evaluate WHY you do what you do.  Really look at it.  Really think about what it is you truly want.  You would be a very shallow person if the only reason why you wanted to lose weight was to be a size 2 again.   And to be honest, in the over 10,000 people I have met, there has never been anyone that only wanted to lose weight because the size 2 was going to fill every hole in their heart and rock their world for eternity.

Whether we know it or not, we do what we do for heart-centered reasons always.  So, figure out your “why”.  Write that down and paste it on your scale if you have to.  Remind yourself why you are so important and why you are so worthy!  If you don’t forget it, you will reach your weight loss goal and you won’t quit.

Happy New Year!

Make 2019 your YEAR!!

Nan