Let's talk about motivation, shall we?

What a nasty word, motivation.  It sticks with you, making you feel comfortable and happy, and then one day another beginner passes by and it runs off to be with them, leaving you to trudge back to that bastard pint of ice cream.

Motivation (motivate:  to provide with a motive or motives; incite; impel) is important when you're trying to lose weight.  If you can get into a routine and stick with it, that's great - perhaps motivation isn't as much of a factor for you.  But when life more or less punches you in the face, what do you need to get started again?  You need motivation.  So, how do you get motivation to be faithful to you and stick around for those times when you need it most?  Surround yourself with it. 

As far as my efforts are concerned, I sometimes feel like I'm living two lives here.  The one where I spout all this talk about how I'm getting started again, about how I'm going to lose weight for real this time, about how my life will be different and I will not be afraid to be myself for fear of being ridiculed for the weight that does not define who I am.  And then there's my second life, the one that kicks in when I step away from my blog and eat pints of ice cream, blocks of cheese, and sit on my ass all day watching Youtube videos instead of exercising.  For me, the thing that's preventing me from reconciling these two lives, the one in which I succeed and the one in which I keep myself from changing, is a great big motivation-shaped hole.  It's almost the end of a rough semester.  I have a lot to do.  I'm tired.  The last thing I want to do is go to the gym, or go outside and jog, or make my kitchen even hotter by cooking when it's already nearly eighty degrees outside and when one roommate refuses to do any dishes.  All I want to do is nothing.  Although the weather is gorgeous, summer is usually the time of the year when I spend the most time being sedentary.  Why?  Because I hate hot weather.  It makes me sweaty and uncomfortable, and I feel five times as fat for every five degree rise in the temperature. 

But if I have a talent for anything, it's for finding the good in what seems to be nothing but bad.  Yeah, summer sucks for me because I'm overweight, can't wear any cool clothes because I don't like the way my arms, legs, feet, whatever look in them, and want to do nothing but sit in front of a hurricane fan with my feet in an ice bath.  However, I can turn this around.  I have that power.  I can choose to look at this summer as torture, or as motivation.  What better motivation is there, after all, than to imagine a summer where I can actually wear real shorts?  When I want to go outside because I want to swim and play volleyball and go jogging on the beach?  How amazing would that feel?

That thought alone is becoming enough to incite me to action.  Back in January, when I started this, it seemed so far away.  But now it's reality, and I will be surrounding myself with motivation. 

To begin with, I got the workbook I won in Alexia's giveaway!  It came in the mail on Monday.  So far, I've learned that I fit more into the category of a compulsive overeater (totally agree with that one), that I think about food incorrectly, that I need to spend time listening to my body, that I need to focus more on giving myself the correct nutrition than an arbitrary number of calories, that I am considered obese, that I am at an increased risk for obesity-related diseases and problems, along with a whole lot of other information about nutrition that I was thrilled to learn.  A lot of people out there have Weight Watchers or a similar program to help them redefine their relationship with food and exercise, but before now I was trying to go it alone, more or less.  I am so happy I got this workbook - this is really the exact tool that I needed, and it couldn't have come at a more perfect time.  The next section deals with meal planning and focusing on major components of nutrition that you should eat every day, and I can't wait to get started with it. 

Other things I'm going to be doing to motivate myself is to create a homework/work/exercise schedule for the rest of the semester.  I really need to plot out days to do homework so that I can exercise, and I feel like sticking to my schedule might be difficult but I'm going to do it.  (Do or do not, there is no try).  Not only will this get me back into the swing of things a little, but it will make sure I get my homework done, too.  :P  I'm also going to change the background on my phone that I see a million times a day to one of those photos I took at the very beginning in my sports bra and workout pants.  That image smashed against my stubborn brain will at least keep my goals present in mind, since I have a habit of letting them slip away during the daytime. 

If motivation won't come back to me, then I will have to drag it kicking and screaming to the gym with me.  Expect a lot more success in the future.  (By the way, I've already started - on Monday I went out and jogged intervals.  I'm not just blowing wind here). 

Well.  I need to go to bed, haha.  Good night, friends!  <3