It’s not a diet. It’s healthy lifestyle changes to lose weight.

The biggest piece of advice we can give you is to stop dieting.  It’s not a diet; it’s healthy lifestyle CHANGES to lose weight and keep it off. A lifestyle change is very difficult, especially for the people in your life.  We had so many problems with our friends and family because it wasn’t only a change for us, it was a change for them too.  Both Willie and I were overweight our entire lives and our weight defined us.  When it was time to make a change things did get very sticky and possibly people didn’t take us too seriously.

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For people who don’t eat healthy or care for “clean” living, what we were doing was a shock.  Food is a social thing.  Family meals, date nights, reuniting with friends, parties, holidays…all of these involve food.  The first thing people couldn’t accept was eating out isn’t something we could do on a REGULAR basis.  The truth is many restaurants don’t have nutritional information available and most that do don’t have healthy enough options for us.  Just because a restaurant does have that information available doesn’t mean it’s suitable for a person watching their food habits.  The people in our lives were just so use to us eating whatever and whenever that it did cause some tension.

As mentioned before we would rather sit at a restaurant where friends want to eat and not eat anything than cause a huge discussion on where we can eat.  It’s just not a battle we want to engage in because eating out limits the places we can eat and feel comfortable.

The beginning was a very difficult time for us because it was hard for people to adjust to the new us.  There were times when we felt alone and isolated, but we were fighting the good fight.  I won’t lie, some relationships were severely fractured because of our lifestyle change.  Not because these people didn’t support us; mainly because the transition was quick and hard.

People did question everything we ate and the amount of food we were allowing ourselves to eat.  They didn’t understand our need for exercise and questioned whether missing one workout was really that big of a deal.  People thought we were being obsessive about the situation which I found very funny.  No one ever questioned what I was doing when I was overeating on fast food.  No one ever said I was being obsessive about sitting on the couch for hours at time watching television…while eating.

I feel like these questions and accusations were coming out because they felt guilty for not making the healthy choices in their lives.  By us doing this, they may have thought we were judging them on their own behavior.  When we decided to change to the healthy side, it was s shining spotlight on their own habits.  Making a lifestyle change is hard enough; I promise we didn’t have time to worry about other people’s habits.  There was/is definitely no judgment coming from us on this point.  This was something we chose for ourselves and we never tried to push it off on anyone else (unless they expressed interest in a change and asked for help).

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That’s the most important thing you should remember when changing your lifestyle.  This is a journey you are taking on your own, so don’t expect others to walk with you or even support you.  Don’t forget your new habits on others and definitely don’t talk down to people or preach to them about their lives.  If you do that people aren’t going to want to be around you.

Also, don’t let people drag you down. Make your decisions and firmly stick with it.  If you don’t want to eat cheeseburgers and friends, you don’t have to.  If you want to work out, don’t let anyone stop you.  It’s your life and the biggest influence over you is you.  People will support you, but there are people out there who want to you fail.  Don’t let anyone derail you from achieving your goals because of peer pressure.  We are all better than that and if by chance you do fail, remember tomorrow is another day and you get to start over again!

A day of (state) resolutions

A day of (state) resolutions

After running the Austin 10/20, Willie and I were honored with state resolutions on the floor of the Texas State Capitol.  Our weight loss achievements are now a part of Texas state history!  This is/was such a honor for us and definitely a moment we won’t forget.  We were honored alongside our friend Richard and Amie James (for creating a healthier community by creating The Gusher Marathon), Iram Leon (for winning the Gusher Marathon while pushing his daughter and just plain winning at life), and Felix Lugo (who ran his 50th marathon holding the American flag at The Gusher).  We…

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Thanks for your support

Thanks for your support

Talk about a crazy day! We had no idea the CNN story would cause this much buzz and definitely wasn’t something we were looking for by talking about our journey. Did you see they did a small bit on the actual news channel too? I missed it, but I heard all about it. Willie and I are not the type of people to seek attention. I originally started the blog because people were asking so many questions, I just wanted a place to put it down so I didn’t have to keep repeating myself. The only thing we ever wanted…

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Back To The Basics: So you want to …

Back To The Basics: So you want to lose the weight. Now what?

Losing a significant amount of weight is a huge task so if you’re deciding to take on the battle, congrats to you. We woke up one day and just decided to lose the weight, but I don’t think we were very smart about the process. This is your chance to learn from our mistakes. You know the commercials always say “consult with a doctor before engaging in any physical activity or diet plan?” You should definitely do that because we did NOT and it opened up a huge can of worms for us. It took a lot for me to…

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The 80/20 Rule of Eating

The 80/20 Rule of Eating

When we first started our weight loss journey I read a lot of magazine articles about people losing weight, hitting a plateau, and keeping the weight off.  I was interested in reading what other people had to say about losing weight.  Whether someone was trying to lose 10 pounds or 100 pounds, I wanted to know the challenges and victories they experienced along the way.  That’s when I learned the 80/20 rule of eating: Don’t beat yourself up because you eat “bad” 20% of the time when you eat right 80% of the time. This is something I really struggle…

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Finding balance

Finding balance

Losing weight is and changing our lifestyle was the easiest and hardest thing we’ve ever done. I know you’ve heard that plenty of times here already, and you’ll probably hear it again many times. But those words are the truth and something everyone needs to know! The first thing people always say to me when talking about losing weight is they don’t have enough time to go to the gym or cook the food, but is that really true? There was definitely some self-evaluation that went on when we started our journey. I spent a lot of time doing things…

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Why do I blog?

Why do I blog?

The short answer to the question: I choose to blog because I’m asked a ton of questions every day about what we did, how we do it and how has it changed our life. By blogging, the story, the experience and my daily life will be here for people to read or not read. The lifestyle change journey is long and continues every day and sometimes people do want a detailed account of what we did to make it work. Others sometimes just want the short version so the blog gives everyone what they want. Blogging is hard because it’s…

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Everything Is New Again

Everything Is New Again

Losing the weight has been one of the biggest accomplishments in life. Everything seems so attainable and there is nothing I feel like I can’t do. I’m opening up more to people which means I’m making new friends. I’m trying new things, so I am developing new interests. Most importantly, I’m taking risks that I never would have taken before when I was larger. It’s amazing just how different I am from before. Losing the weight was just not a physical change, it was a mental and emotional change also. People look up to me as this great inspiring force…

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