How My Weight Loss Journey Influenced My Whole Life Journey!

HEY Y'ALL!! Yes, that's me above. And to be very clear, it's two different "mes" in both photos. I don't mean that by just the physical appearance. By how you can see my skin looks different between the two, or by how you can see the difference in the weight in my face. When I started losing weight, not only did my body become different but so did my mind, spirit, and soul!!

To clarify, it didn't take me 5 years to go from what I look like on the left to what I look like on the right. It only took me about a year. I got really serious about losing weight in April of 2019 and what helped me do it was the Keto (Ketogenic) diet. I'm not here to push the Keto diet, I believe that people should do whatever works for them to be healthy and there are so many ways to reach your goals. But Keto is definitely what got me to where I am now. I've lost 86 pounds in under a year doing strict Keto. My starting weight was 336 pounds and before the pandemic hit this year (eye roll) I was 250 pounds (yes, I still have a ways to go). To be transparent, I've gained back about 15 pounds during the lockdown but I won't be focusing on that because it's a non-factor. I've conquered weight lose before and I shall conquer it again! And that is actually what I'll be focusing on. How conquering weight loss helped me to gain so many other healthy things in life. Disclaimer: I am still learning and growing in so many ways so I'll never claim to have all the answers. But I've also come a very long way and am confident in the things that have worked for me throughout life overall. Can't you tell by the comparison pic!?

Gain 1: A New Mindset

Because of all the temptations in the world, being healthy is not easy. Especially when you're coming from so many years, including childhood, of being unhealthy. When eating better and exercising regularly was never really a part of your lifestyle, it is an entire mind shift to start to incorporate those things on a normal basis. But it's not impossible. Working on changing my mind set is what has gotten me so far in weight loss. It wasn't just about becoming mindful of what I was eating or mentally pushing myself when my workouts became more challenging. It also became about having the mental strength to continue on the journey when I would fall off, which has happened many times, even now (y'all heard me say I gained back 15 pounds currently)! Another very important thing is that when I become imperfect on this path, I don't mentally stress about it or dwell on it in a negative way anymore. That's honestly a more recent attitude that I've taken on. I'm learning that we should always try to give ourselves grace which is sometimes easier said than done. But when you've come so far and know what you're capable of, you don't need to beat yourself up or feel bad about messing up. You just need to find your focus again and keep going after it. This mindset can be applied to anything in life.

Gain 2: Real Self-Love

I've always been a person who loves to take care of my outer appearance. Like all the beautiful women of the world (and we are ALL beautiful), I love wearing nice clothes, having my hair done, and just simply trying to be cute. Only caring about what I looked like on the outside was considered self-love to me. But it wasn't until I committed to dropping pounds and getting healthy that I realized I had put limitations on my self-love. Throughout this journey, I've found that the real self-love came when I started to care more about the kind of food I ate regularly and how active I was. The real self-love came when I started truly working on accepting my body as it is in this moment, not when I'm completely done losing all the weight that I want to lose. While these things are still works in progress for me because I'm not perfect, these are all things that I mindfully work on everyday like second nature now. It has become more about fixing myself from the inside first, not only focusing on the outside. But when you fix yourself from the inside, whatever needs to be fixed on the outside naturally follows.

Gain 3: Deeper Spirituality

I like to consider myself as someone who has always been sort of in touch with their spiritual side. Not very deep into it in the past, but always soul searching. I've had years of confusion on what I really believed in and how I would like to practice my beliefs. As I've grown older, I've come to know that organized religion was not for me, which is not uncommon for a lot of people. But it was somewhere along my path to becoming healthy that I discovered my belief in things that are considered more spiritual than religious. I believe in energy and vibrations and upon getting healthy, I recognized how these things started to change for the better for me. Eating better and exercising regularly was giving me better energy and raising my vibration. Eventually, these became things that I couldn't keep confined to just my health. Becoming more open-minded and so drawn to these concepts because of my experience, I couldn't do anything else but dive deeper into this through research to gain more knowledge and figure out ways to live a spiritual life. As I began to practice spiritual concepts, I solidly became someone who goes within and believes in her intuition more and more everyday. Who recognizes and trusts the signs and syncronicities from my spirit guides, to guide my life. Even when these things aren't so easy or I become doubtful, I am learning to keep the faith and stay the course. Confirmation always comes that I'm right where I need to be to accomplish anything that I desire.

So if you look at the me on the left, that was the me who was not only physically unhealthy, but who was also still very unaware of self. That was the me who thought I was already living my best life. And I guess I could say that I was considering where I was in my consciousness then, doing the best with what I had at the time. But the me on the right though!! That's the me that's breaking the mold. That's the me that God and the universe intended I be so that I can have nothing but love and wonderfulness to give to myself, the people closest to me, and the world. I had to dig real deep for her and I'm still digging. It ain't over! What I hope y'all can ultimately take away from this is stay on the path to discovering your true authentic self and fall in love with that. That is the way to all of the abundance that you need. My way of getting on that path to a better life overall was through bettering my health. But it doesn't matter how you get there, as long as you do.

We are love. We are light. We are blessed.

Lisa