Apologies in advance, this will be long.
I've read a number of posts from fine folks here who say they are really, really struggling with motivation. Getting motivated, maintaining motivation, re-motivating when you inevitably hit the bump in the road in the form of half a pizza and some delicious mozzarella sticks on a Friday night.
Not surprising, in the least. This weight loss shit takes work. HARD work. Continuous hard work. Every day. Continuously, all diggity-damned day.
We all have some kind of amorphous idea of what we want to be and look like. We want to be that person who can just get up at 6am, every damn day, to crank out an hour of exercise, pound a healthy protein smoothie, look at themself in the mirror and say "I feel great and I am crushing the shit out of this life thing!"
They look like they do it so effortlessly, don't they?
I always wanted to be like that.
I always asked myself, "why the ever loving fuck can I not be that person for whom all this healthy eating and exercise and balanced lifestyle shit is just automatic?"
I was missing two major points.
First: it isn't automatic.
It's NEVER automatic. It never was and never will be. It ALWAYS takes the work. HARD work. Continuous hard work.
Second: I was missing my "why."
I mean, looking great, feeling great, brimming with energy and confidence, that all sounds amazing, right?
But those reasons are superficial.
Those are GOALS. Those are not a PURPOSE.
What do I mean? Let me take a little sidebar to tell some of my story.
I'm 44. Been married almost six years. No kids yet. My wife and I really, REALLY want kids.
And we've been struggling with infertility for the past few years.
We both have good careers, pretty secure finances, fairly supportive families (not all unicorns and sunshine, by any stretch, but by and large more positive than negative). In a lot of ways we're incredibly privileged.
And the thing we both want the most in life - to become parents - has been eluding us. Because we got married late and prioritized other stuff ahead of starting our family. If you've ever seen the movie Idiocracy with Luke Wilson, we are 100% the "smart" couple at the beginning that waited to have kids until they were too old. Easy to laugh about, except it's not funny.
So while we've been going through the slow, excruciating, awful grind of fertility treatment, during a global pandemic I should add, I went through a phase of getting pretty depressed, more depressed than I've ever felt as an adult. And I built up all the poor lifestyle habits you can imagine. Staying up until 2:30 on worknights watching TV on the couch to numb myself. Getting stoned multiple times a week. Shoveling chips and ice cream into my face. Eating my feelings. Barely moving. Never being active.
I didn't get to the heaviest I'd been as an adult (I've been overweight basically my whole adult life, at times bordering on obese), but I got within spitting distance of it.
Eventually I felt like I'd reached a bottom and started seeing a great therapist. That helped me start a framework for making changes.
I've had A LOT of time over the last few years to think about what kind of parent I will be, and what kind of parent I want to be.
What I want to be able to do with my kids.
What kind of example I want to set for my kids.
And I said to myself, well shit, the way I'm currently living (see: terrible sleep, shoveling junk into my face, Cheech & Chonging my way through life) is a fucking terrible example.
It's likely that I'll be 45 by the time I have my first kid. For a lot of you, that'll sound ancient as shit. Biologically you're not wrong. Healthwise, things start to go downhill for us humans after 30. We lose muscle. Our metabolism slows. Random shit that didn't used to hurt starts hurting. Getting old sucks.
And that's what I'll be going through when I'm trying to keep up with a toddler who's running around doing toddler things. When I'm trying to keep up with a six-year-old running around doing six-year-old things. Et cetera.
I'm already going to be an old dad. I can't do anything about that.
But just because I'll be an old dad, doesn't mean I have to be a slow, weak, creaky, out of breath dad who always has to tell their kid, "wait, sorry, I can't do that with you because I hurt/I'm gasping for air/I'm falling apart."
That is one hundred percent within my power to change.
Being able to be a fit, healthy, energetic dad for my future offspring, is my purpose for my weight loss and fitness journey.
I did not have good examples for health and fitness when I was growing up. My mom was (still is) obese. My dad was basically skinny and did some running but he didn't exercise much. I was unathletic, pudgy, slow, nerdy, and I got bullied a lot in school. I wholeheartedly believe that poor parental examples are behind at least some of those traumas I went through when I was younger.
I want to give my kids a solid foundation to build on. So they can be happier than I was. So they can know what it means to feel good about themselves. So they can value themselves and their own worth.
That's my purpose.
And I keep it in mind every morning when I work out; every time I lift a weight; every time I hop on the elliptical; every time I make time for healthy meal planning and meal prep.
And it's given me a superpower.
The superpower to stick with this hard shit, to do the damn work, to redirect cravings for shitty food, to go to bed early enough to fit my strength training in before my workday starts.
Because, my lord, this is HARD.
You need superpowers to do it.
Purpose gives you superpowers.
What's your purpose?
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