Need Motivation? {guest post}

Today I want to introduce you to one of my sponsors! Meet Sarah: she's taking over today to offer you some motivation to lose those extra pounds!
Take it away Sarah!
 

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Jenna has so graciously allowed me to take over her blog for a guest post today! My name is Sarah and I blog over at Fueled and Aflame. I began my blog about 9 months ago to help keep me accountable with my weight loss. Prior to blogging I lost about 35 pounds.

(If you would like to see before/during/after pictures head over to my “Weight Loss Journey” tab on my blog.)

I still have about 20 pounds to go before I hit my goal. Jenna mentioned to me that she recently began her weight loss journey and so we thought it would be appropriate to have me post on staying motivated. Let me tell you, staying motivated is difficult. There are days when you just want to scarf a burger and fries and not think twice about it. There will be weeks where you don’t lose any weight or you may even gain some weight even though you did EVERYTHING right. Basically, life will throw every possible obstacle at you throughout your journey.

In order to be able to overcome these obstacles you MUST stay motivated. My advice for keeping your motivation is simple. It has everything to do with WHY you want to lose weight. Each person is different. You have to find what works for YOU. It requires that you do a lot of soul searching.

I had a friend post this a few weeks ago on my Facebook page:

"You're doing such an amazing job! I just haven't found my everyday motivation/determination yet. But success stories help me out!"

It is so important to find your motivation. The most successful motivations that I have found for myself are not physical in nature... especially now that I am down to my last 20 lbs. It was so easy for me to lose the first 35 pounds but these last 20 are being stubborn as hell. Some days it is so easy to talk myself into thinking "maybe my body is just telling me that I will always be a little overweight." At my current weight I am still at a BMI of 27.5-- which is too high.

Without a sturdy motivation it would be easy to give in to being "content" with my current weight. Success stories and inspiring people can only get you so far. My friend, Jessica, who posted that on my Facebook is right on target. She is journeying to find her motivation. It is a process. It isn't something you just decide to do overnight.

There are two parts of my life that have provided me with my motivation: my spirituality and my desire to be a mother.

This is one of my favorite verses that helped me define WHY I wanted to lose weight:

 

With promises like this to pull us on, dear friends, let's make a clean break with everything that defiles or distracts us, both within and without. Let's make our entire lives fit and holy temples for the worship of God.

2 Corinthians 7:1

 

I feel like over-eating is something that “you just don’t discuss.” It isn’t seen as being something “harmful” or “sinful.” How is eating in excess any different from gambling too much or drinking too much? I am from the South and down here food is used for everything. If you are sad, you eat. If you are happy, you eat. If someone gets married, you eat. If someone dies, you eat. If you go to church, you go eat Mexican food afterwards. I realized that eating and thinking about eating was taking up a huge amount of my time—time that could be spent doing more productive things.   

My other big motivator is the fact that I want to have a healthy pregnancy and I want to have a healthy lifestyle established in order to model good behavior to my future kids. I have seen so many women in my life who were overweight before pregnancy, gained too much weight during pregnancy, and then never really got all of the weight off. I want to be a mother more than anything in the world. However, we are not going to consider trying until I am down to my healthy weight. I want to begin with a healthy weight in hopes of my healthy habits carrying over throughout my pregnancy. If I were to get pregnant now I would already be 20 pounds overweight then if I gained another 30 pounds during pregnancy that would be 50 pounds I would need to lose. This is a HUGE motivation for me. If I didn't have this motivation driving me, I probably would have already said "to hell with it." However, just because I have a strong motivation doesn't mean I don't screw up from time to time. The difference in the motivated me and the non-motivated me is that I get right back on track instead of just burying my face in a pile of donuts.

 

Have you found your motivation? If so, what is it?

I hope you enjoyed my post and will come over and say hi at my blog!