This was just coming to my mind recently and throughout the last four months. I got married back in July and my brother was the Master of Ceremonies at the wedding. He said some things about me at the reception during his speech that had me thinking of the past. For example, I told him back in 2014 that I had stopped smoking (this time for good as I still haven't touched a cigarette since). During his comments, he joked about how he asked me "So who is the girl?" After the joke, he commented about my fierce determination and focus that I had. It appeared that once my mind was set on something, I would likely accomplish my goals. I stopped smoking because I set out to do so one way or another. It took 2 long years to do it, but it finally happened. Of course, like my brother mentioned, it happened after I met my wife.
But I also had to look back 10 years ago even. I remember being overweight and close to 260 lbs and not really fit and no exercising at all. I recall being close to 300 lbs at one point after I left high school. But something lit a spark for me around 2008. A new job at a pizza place, and in my last semester of the first program, I started to work out at the gym. I also did some running and watched as I progressed further and further with my running as the months and years came along. I remember being able to run 5 miles (after I stopped smoking for the first time) by 2012. Of course, the setback came after I started smoking again. No way in hell was I able to accomplish 5 miles again after that.
Weightlifting and training was awesome as well. I remember eventually being able to squat about 270 lbs and deadlift at least 300 lbs by 2011-2012 as well.
The reason for all of this was the determination of course. Within the first year of this training, I changed my eating habits drastically as well and managed to cut my weight down to as low as 175 lbs. This is something my brother did bring up during the wedding as well as when he mentioned the fierce determination. However, it was clear that I needed to put on muscle. That was where the weight training came in. I regularly weighed between 180-185 after with some solid muscle mass. I remember enjoying the body I had back in 2009-2012. My body didn't always look the same, nor did I have any six pack abs, but my motivation to succeed came from there.
Shortly around May of 2012, and now having lived away from home for two years, something happened. It is almost like I realized that being an adult kind of sucked. You can look at my blog entries from that time period as I spent a lot of time writing in 2012-2013. When I met my wife, I stopped writing. I do remember being a little obsessed with finding a girlfriend at the time and I had a couple meltdowns because the types I was meeting just weren't working out too well. I recall beating myself up over these things too. But what I do remember bothering me the most at the time was the fact that I had few friends to hang out with and I knew I needed to meet some people. So I believe around this time, I switched my focus from exercising and working out to working on my social skills and going to meetup events through meetup.com. I ended up making friends there, some of which have come and gone and others who are still around as friends. I also met a few ladies, one of which became my wife
After a couple years away from the gym, and periodically going out for runs outside here and there, I decided to get back into weight training. I do remember things getting tough as I was always getting sick or hurt as well. Eventally, the illnesses were determined to be allergies and sinuses, which meant I had to find a way to work around this. However, I remember some back, leg and foot injuries occurred which did discourage me a little bit from trying certain exercises. Eventually, I started seeing a physio to help correct some bad posture and form when doing exercises. I got back into proper running and and starting to see things lift off again. Albeit, right now, I weigh between 220-230 lbs. Being older and eating some of the same foods don't work out to well when it comes to weight loss, so of course I am little bit overweight. But I am noticing a lot of improvements with the running and the weightlifting, so I simply don't care as much about the weight. I just have to avoid certain foods if I want to take my weight more seriously.
It was recently I started thinking about what my brother said a lot more, especially now that I am up to running 3 miles again after about 3 months of working at it. I asked myself, "what the hell happened in the last few years, and why was my motivation missing?" I was beginning to wonder why I struggled with trying to meet goals and missing so much work. Why couldn't I focus on getting better and making my days more enjoyable? Where was my energy? Well, it's like the age old saying goes: you got to use energy to create energy. My motivation was gone because I had little energy, and I wasn't using what little energy I had to create more of it. I also asked why I wasn't doing more writing and why I wasn't motivated to do more of that. But hopefully, I can sort that out soon and should write blogs regardless of what is on my mind. Hopefully the more I write, the better my writing becomes.
