I was a competitive power lifter and one of the positive of being a power lifter was that I could eat. Much like football players, it wasn’t frowned upon to be a BIG powerlifter. So I was heavy and overweight and I ended up getting injured which meant I couldn’t work out anymore, but I loved to eat. There was no balance in what I ate or how much I ate. Oh boy did I love to eat. I continued to eat as if I was still lifting and just kept putting on weight and got heavier and heavier. The weight needed to come off, I knew this but I just wasn’t sure how.
My weight was unhealthy and I really wanted to be there for my family. So, I went on a ketogenic (Keto) diet. I lost the weight and it was fantastic. But it did not solve my problem because I was struggling to keep the weight off. Soon the entire keto diet just was not working for me. I mean, it was fantastic at melting off the body fat, but it was not fixing the problem. I was stressed, exhausted, and was working so hard to keep that weight off but it was really getting in the way of what I was doing at work.
When Things Are Out of Balance They Effect All Parts of Your Life
It was getting in the way with things at home too. I was crabby, irritable, exhausted all the time. But, as I went through this journey, I learned a lot and did a lot of self-discovery. I realized that one of the things that I was missing was balance, balance in my life, balance in my diet program, in my weight loss, in everything. This was truly where the transformation began for me. Balance was the key, the piece that I had been missing for so long, and once I realized that, with a lot of trial and error, everything just fell into place. It is absolutely amazing. I had the body that I had always wanted and I felt fantastic. So, I want to share with you what I learned along my journey.
What do I mean about balance in a weight loss program? Balance to me, is all parts of the system that are working together to accomplish your goal. I have created what I call my weight loss wheel, which consists of four parts.
The first part is your diet and nutrition. The second part is body, meaning your exercise. Third you have your mind or mindset, what is going on upstairs. And finally, is the spiritual side or your higher power, whatever your religious beliefs may be.
Balance Means it has to be Sustainable
I had the diet portion taken care of. I was really doing well with it. But it was not sustainable. It was leaving me tired, crabby, exhausted, I was having cramps, and I eventually I suffered two major tendon ruptures. However, I did very little with the body or the exercise. I was focusing all just on the diet. I was not exercising, like I should have been, and I knew better.
The mindset, I underestimated just how incredibly important that is because that is your habits. Those are your conscious and subconscious habits. Habits are the things that drive you. I was only working a little on the mindset part. I was not really addressing it. And then the spiritual side, was another part that I was ignoring.
The Keto diet I was doing was not filling every part of the wheel. And when we remove parts of the wheel it can’t roll down the street. If I put an incomplete wheel on my car, I’m not going down the road very fast and certainly not very comfortable. And that was where I was at. That is what I was doing to myself and soon realized I was not at my full potential. I wasn’t able to be the father that I wanted to be, the husband, or the friend.
Get Off of the Roller Coaster
On the Weight Loss Wheel we have our diet, our body, our mindset, and our spirit. If we are paying attention to all aspects of the wheel, you become sustainably successful. Paying attention to your diet is important and something you will have to do for the rest of your life. The food industry right now is not helping us and they are hiding a lot of things in our food. There are a lot of things that are unhealthy for you that you don’t know about.
Exercise, such as high intensity interval training and yoga programs, which work amazingly well because they work the entire body. They worked everything, my flexibility, my strength, my endurance and they could do it in short periods of time. I learned to bio hack the body and get those effective exercise routines.
Mindset training is another key component. Tapping into who you are, your inner motivation, what truly drives you, your why behind weight loss. That is what will drive you when things get tough in your weight loss program. It needs to be deeper than “I want to look good when I go to the pool.” Yes, we all want that, but why do you want to do that?
Tap into a deeper meaning. For me, my why was I wanted to be there for my kids, for my wife. I wanted to grow old and be healthy not worried about my body falling apart on me. That was my inner motivation and that’s what drove me. I wanted to still be able to move in my seventies and eighties so I could be there with my grandkids. Once I realized that and tapped into it I found it easier to make a long lasting transition.
The Final Key to Balance
The last thing is the spiritual part. Your higher power, whatever it may be, you have to be in tune with your spirituality. When you focus on that, everything else falls into place because that also taps into who you are as a person and keeps moving you forward. Now we’ve got a complete round wheel that if I put that on my car, it is going to move down the road very smoothly and effectively.
Not only will you lose the weight, but you will tap into who you are. That is where you can achieve that true transformation and that’s why I created the “4 Week Weight Loss System for Busy Moms and Dads.”
