Slow down
The faster you rush through the weight loss process, the less prepared you’ll be to maintain your progress.
Take your time developing the foundation that will be your lifelong active lifestyle. Trade the next few years getting this squared away, so that the decades that follow include a healthy relationship with food, fitness and yourself. Please. 🤗 👊🏻
Hey there. I want to talk about momentum and what actually creates it over the long haul. Not the hype version. Not the version that feels good for a week and then disappears when life gets busy. I am talking about the kind of momentum that quietly compounds because you keep showing up even when the effort feels small.
Hey there. I think about my life as a story. We all start in the same place and we all eventually reach the same ending, and everything that happens in between becomes the book we leave behind. As I get closer to forty four I have been feeling just how fast time moves. The last couple of decades flew by. All the things I used to obsess over, especially the fitness and weight loss stuff or the worries about building YLF, felt huge at the time. They kept me up at night. They felt like everything. Now most of those things do not matter at all.
Hey there. I have been thinking a lot about the people we choose to keep close. When you are on any long term journey, especially something like weight loss or building a forever active lifestyle, you notice quickly how much support matters. It is hard to show up day after day. It is hard to push through setbacks. It is hard to stay grounded when progress moves forward, then sideways, then backward, then forward again. Having people in your life who encourage you without judgment makes all of that more manageable.
Hey there. I have been thinking a lot about how much data we have access to now. Steps, calories, heart rate, sleep cycles, recovery scores, weight trends, macro breakdowns, you name it. If you have been on a weight loss journey for years you probably track at least some of this stuff, and honestly, the fact that it is all so affordable and available blows my mind. When I started working on my own fitness in the late nineties and early two thousands none of this existed. We were guessing most of the time, hoping our effort was paying off, and waiting for the scale or our clothes to change before we believed we were making progress.
Hey there. I have been thinking a lot about how we talk about mental and emotional health, especially in the fitness space. For so many years I believed this was supposed to be an either or situation. Either I changed my body or I fixed my mind. Either I exercised or I worked through my emotions. Either I pushed harder or I paused long enough to look at what was really going on. What I know now is that this is an and situation. All of it matters. All of it works together. And all of it is part of the inside/out process that has shaped the way I live.
Hey there. I have been thinking a lot about how we share our experiences and why they matter. Not the polished versions. Not the 60 second summaries that get pushed around social media. I mean the real stories. The ones that come from actually living through something and taking the time to understand what those moments meant.
Hey there. I have spent a lot of years watching how the fitness industry talks to people. Once you see the patterns, you cannot unsee them. So much of the marketing is built around the idea that you are not enough as you are. Your body is not enough. Your willpower is not enough. Your routine is not enough. And the only way to fix it is to buy whatever solution they are pushing at the moment. What I have learned through my own process is that none of that messaging holds up when you build your life from the inside/out.
Hey there. I used to look at exercise as something I needed to master immediately. I wanted the perfect routine, the ideal split, the exact formula that would fix everything. But over the years, especially after being on my own fitness and weight loss journey for decades, I realized that what matters most is how willing I am to meet myself where I am. Not where I think I should be. Not where I used to be. Not where I hope to be five years from now. Right here. Right now.
Hey there. I spent much of my young adult years thinking that changing my body would finally make me feel good enough. If I lost the weight, built the routine, and hit the goals that everyone else said mattered, then maybe I would feel lighter in my own mind. What I eventually learned is that none of that matters if I am tearing myself down from the inside. Loving and appreciating the body I have at every stage is the foundation of everything. That truth applies to fitness, work, relationships, creativity, and the way I move through the world as a whole.
Hey there. I have been thinking a lot lately about what sits beneath the surface of the things we do. In fitness, in work, in how we show up online and offline, there is always more going on than the actions people see. Most of the time, the things we chase on the outside are only the tip of the iceberg. They look impressive, they look disciplined, and they often get attention. But when you go deeper, you start to realize that your why is what drives everything. And if that why is built on not liking who you are or how you look, nothing on the outside will ever feel like enough.