Consistency…why is it so important to me?
I preach consistency and I will continue to preach consistency. I am going to be 100% honest with you on this and tell you why I am so passionate about being consistent. This may be a long one, but bare with me I promise it will be good. I will tell you my full story, share progress photos along the way, and explain what has lead me to getting the results I have desired for so long.
Starting my journey, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing nor did I really know what I wanted. I thought I wanted to lose weight and just look good, but little did I know what I really needed was to gain confidence and get healthier. I hated how I would hide behind drinking and eating socially because everyone else was doing it. I didn’t realize in the moment, but now that I have grown so much and had time to reflect on this experience, I now realize that I wasn’t making decision based off of what I wanted. In my head I told myself I was an athlete, I was fit, I could eat and drink whatever I wanted. In reality, I was out of shape, gaining a good amount of weight, and slowly forming habits that were detrimental to my health. Now by no means was I out of control or in need of serious help and I am extremely lucky to say I have not been in that state in my life. However, mentally I was not in control of my actions. I was so caught up in pleasing everyone around me that I did not take into consideration what I wanted for myself. I wanted to be around friends and if that meant going out every weekend drinking or eating at restaurants just to meet up and hang out, then I was there. It was a cycle I got sucked into and I can guarantee some of you have gotten in the same cycle. It’s so easy to want to be around your friends and family and then get sucked into eating and drinking every time you do so. It becomes a social habit that is hard to break.
My journey started with one single person being the most important role model in my life. My sister to this day is my number 1 role model. She showed me how you can make positive changes for yourself, by being consistent and making choices that make you happy, not anyone else. She encouraged me to go to the gym with her and she taught me everything she had learned. It was a HUGE eye opener to me after our first arm workout together. I woke up the next day and literally could not move my arms. I kid you not, ask my mom because she was at work with me. I could not extend them all the way without pain, I could not open a paper drawer to the copier, it was bad. In that moment I realized how weak and out of shape I really was. I needed to start at a beginner level and learn how to properly train my body in order to avoid injury and be successful. I became dedicated in that moment to make a change for myself. I looked at it as an investment to my body. It was a slow process, but every morning at 5am, my sister and I would get up and go to the gym before work because this was the only time we could go together before our days started. At the time she was working in NYC and I was teaching in North Jersey, so we had very different schedules.
Skip ahead to a few years later, I moved to Hawaii on my own, no longer had my sister as my workout buddy and was completely alone in a new place thousands of miles away from home. It was terrifying, exhilarating, and extremely challenging. Everyone assumed that when I moved to paradise I was happy and having the time of my life. Well, this did eventually happen, but that is not how it started out. I was alone, had no job, and was struggling to figure out how to even make it work for a few months. Finally, one of my best friends moved out to come live with me and everything got significantly better. I got a job the week before she moved out, we found an apartment, I bought a car, and everything seemed to be going up. Everything except my confidence, self-esteem, and overall health. I got stuck back into a rut of bad habits, not working out and afraid to go to the gym on my own after so long of having a workout buddy. I had no idea what to do on my own at the gym and was way too afraid to even ask.
Come January 2015 I had had enough. I was so tired of feeling overweight, unhappy, and unconfident. I pulled the trigger, with the help of my trusty role model, and enrolled in a fitness/nutrition challenge that was 8 weeks. Guided by a coach that I still admire today, Katy Hearn. My sister and I decided to take this challenge on together, from thousands of miles apart and put everything we had into it. I had come to the realization that I was spending so much time and money on putting myself into a rut and being unhappy that it was time to change that mentality and spend my time and money on making myself healthier and happier. I was willing to do whatever it took to get to that happy place. I was at the gym 5 days a week and it was usually twice a day, once before work to get cardio in and once after work to complete my strength training. I didn’t want to spend multiple hours in the gym after work and lose all of my time with my friends, so this is what I had to do to make it work. My friends did not fully understand at first, but the most important thing to me was that they supported me. My friends did not participate, but continued to cheer me on and let me focus on my goals. I was determined to make this challenge work and learn as much as possible during it. This was the first time I was introduced to tracking macros, training with weights on a scheduled program, and working out twice a day to make sure I could still balance my social activities. I stuck to the plan for the entire 8 weeks and I could not be happier with how it transformed me. Not only did I see physical changes like the pictures you see below, but mentally I was SOOOO confident, so happy, and so much stronger. I realized that the physical changes weren’t even that important to me by the end, it was the friendships I made in the gym, the confidence I gained in myself, and the motivation I saw myself show that made this challenge so important to me. This was a huge milestone in my journey.
The one thing that was so key to my success (I bet you can guess by now, but I will tell you anyway) was consistency. I stuck to the plan and I continued to improve myself little by little every single day. I focused on what I could do better and reflected on my experience daily. This was so important. I set goals for myself that were achievable and realistic. Another key to success has been my progress photos, As you can see at the bottom I have taken plenty of progress photos along my journey (these are just a few). Typically I do not show these to anyone, I keep them in a hidden folder on my phone and look at them every now and then to check in on my progress and see how far I have come.. However, today I am feeling a little extra vulnerable and I am going to share some of them with you. Not because I want to show off or get compliments, but because I think it is so important to visually see the changes happening to your body. The first 4 weeks of my challenge in January 2015 I was not feeling super confident. I didn’t really think I was making much progress, still felt really sore after almost every workout and was struggling hard with counting macros correctly (it took me almost the entire 8 weeks to figure out how to be successful with counting and tracking my food). But, when I took my 4 week photos and compared them to my day 1 photos I was shocked!!! I had no idea my body was changing so much and this gave me the motivation I needed to keep pushing to the end. Once I saw the power of comparing progress photos I never stopped. Every so often I will take a new set of progress photos and compare them to the previous ones. This allows me to reflect on what I have been doing recently and if it is in line with my current goals.
To this day my goals change throughout the year, but no matter what I am consistent with making small progress every single day to reach those goals I have set. It does not have to be extreme to work, it has to be realistic for you. Not everyone can follow the same plan, eat the same way, or has the same goals. It is important to focus on yourself and only yourself if you want to be successful. It is so easy to get caught up in comparing your success to others, especially with social media taking over our lives.
One take-away I want you to get from this extremely long story is that your journey is important! No matter what is happening in our world, no matter what other people may tell you, your goals and your health are so important. Take control of your choices, put in the work, and make consistent progress every day to get to where you want to be. Make the investment to learn, get help from a trainer or coach if you need it, and take advantage of the knowledge and skills that others around you have. This has and will always be the best investment I ever made. I am not sure there are many people that would regret getting healthy and feeling good, but I could be wrong. Stay focused on your goals , you can do this!
