Adrienne Hood

A Weight Loss Journey Guide This Week...

So let’s fast forward to the beginning of Fall. I’d worked hard ALL Summer during my husband’s deployment and it was finally coming to a close. He was coming HOME!! I’d gone from my heaviest weight, 180 pounds in a size 16, before working with Debbie to almost 120 pounds in a size 4. I couldn’t believe it!! It’s hard to describe that feeling of FINALLY conquering something that’d weighed on me, no pun intended, almost my entire life.  Anyone who is or has been overweight, you know what I’m talking about. The burning desire to lose the weight that’s coupled with a crippling inability to accomplish it. It’s a maddening circle of failure. It crushes your hopes until that fire in you dies down to almost nothing until you get fed up and repeat the cycle. Well, no more! I did it. I finally did it! I was free and happy and healthy! It made me think of all those times I’d watched a weight loss show or commercial on TV and tried to imagine that elated feeling those success stories must be feeling. How much I wanted to grab onto that, to have that for myself.  Well, it was mine.

Over the Summer, I think the biggest realization I had to make was that excuses are just that, excuses. I always had an excuse for why I ate this or that like being stressed or bored, or that I was simply a victim of my circumstances like the influences that were around me. So the family wants to go to the Chinese buffet? Well, I shouldn’t but they want me to. Who am I to say no? Forget the fact that I could at least make some healthy choices at the buffet. That’s not what everyone else was doing. This was an extremely hard habit to break. Our family loved to gather around food as I know lots of families do.  You don’t have to eat what everyone else does. You DON’T.  Stop it!

People gather around food to socialize and talk. While food is the excuse, the focus is not for people to monitor what you eat during those gatherings so make HEALTHY choices, not excuses. No one will notice. However, you will when you get on that scale. When you look in the mirror. When you feel that huge wave of guilt rushing over you because you failed AGAIN. Why is it so hard? Because you let other people’s priorities become your own. You can undo this! It’s a difficult mental roadblock that is engrained in a lot of us but you can break through. How do you do that? By having someone in your corner.

Debbie was that person. Because of my healthy lifestyle, that circle of people in my corner has grown over the years but it all started with just ONE person. Debbie Portell. Find your person. Find a trainer. You will NOT regret it. Stop that maddening cycle of failure once and for all. You don’t have to do it all by yourself. You don’t have to try to be strong all the time, all by yourself because, let’s face it, you can’t. You’ve proven that to yourself time and time again. You simply don’t yet possess the tools to empower yourself so, please, let someone help you! This is not some ridiculous, quick-fix diet pill commercial on TV. None of that works. None of it. All those lies just help feed the cycle that I know you want to finally break out of. This is how you change your life. You get someone in your corner. Someone with knowledge, experience, and the fire to drive you to succeed. YOU can be that success story! It’s not some faraway dream that only exists on TV! Plus, I’d be willing to guess that almost all those success stories had trainers. So join the club! I would’ve never made it without Debbie and that’s the truth!

I don’t know if I can really put into words that feeling of not only seeing my husband after being gone for months of deployment but with the added joy of knowing that he is FINALLY seeing me like I should’ve always been. He’d never seen me like this. Ever. It makes me want to cry. Not just because of all the time I wasted being unhappy with myself, but also because I was so proud and happy to finally be where I always wanted to be. In my husband’s arms, I was finally the way I’ve always seen myself but never been able to realize on my own.  

So, like I said in an earlier blog, some people need that big life changing moment to realize that it’s time to make a change. My husband’s deployment was mine. Don’t wait and wait and wait around for yours. Stop wasting your life! Make that change NOW!