“Make peace with the mirror and watch your reflection change.”
– I saw this once on a T-Shirt

It’s been roughly five months since I’ve started this journey. Over the weekend, I had some time to reflect and realized a few things:

• Holy crap, time flies, it’s already June!
• I’m not at goal yet??
• This is the longest I’ve ever stuck with the weight loss thing – in 30 years.

The first bullet point was just a general observation, the second will take care of itself.  I want to talk about that last bullet point since it reveals huge progress outside the realm of the scale. Thinking back on all my past attempts to lose weight, there is only one thing I can figure that I did differently – this time I quit. That my friends is not a typo. I did say I quit. Read on…

I am unable to pinpoint the exact moment I realized that I had to quit, but my best guess is around the middle of month two – which would have been the middle of February. I was managing to stay on track, and actually, I was doing quite well, but I could feel myself losing steam, running out of ideas, compiling excuses for the inevitable fall from the wagon that I absolutely knew without a doubt was coming – because I’d been there (many times) before. That’s when I decided that I had to quit – but not quit like give up – I had to quit so I could start.

I quit trash-talking myself and started talking to myself the way I talk to the ones that I love.
I quit making excuses and started making choices.
I quit waiting until tomorrow and started right there, in the moment I was in.
I quit sabotaging my efforts and started trusting the process.
AND finally, I quit doubting myself and started believing that I could do it. And that is when I truly started my journey.

It’s really hard to change your own mind. I have to remind myself who I am and what I can do daily, and sometimes hourly (especially when I’m exercising). When I tell you that I start every day like it the first day of my journey, this is what I mean. Chasing down what you want out of life is hard work and it takes relentless courage and enthusiasm – and for some, even quitting. Today I challenge you to have the courage to quit – so you can get started.