Critical errors to stay clear for on your weight loss journey.

Good luck with your journey 👍. You got this.

Everybody who has struggled with their weight at one point have decided at some point in their life that they want to make a change. Trust me, I have been there and still there to this day. Even though I have lost over a hundred lbs in the past year and a half. The journey is not over, and the struggle continues, but so does my drive. What also comes with my drive I have also made a lot of mistakes in my journey. But you live and you learn.

TRUSTING THE SCALE

Every morning when you first wake up after a long day of working out and dieting. You are excited to see the progress, and to your disappointment, you don’t see the results that you were hoping for, and that sends you on a trail of depression and sadness because you didn’t hit your goal. But here is the honest truth. You are making your goals, you are working, and the scale is not keeping up with your muscle gain. Do work yourself to death where you hate your journey and give up. I almost did that a couple of times but then decided to leave the scale behind, and it was the best decision that I made on this journey.

NOT GIVING YOUR BODY TIME TO REST

You are in a mode where the light switch never turns off even after the signs of exhaustion, but you have to hit those goals, right? Sure, you can achieve them, but you can also hit an injury from the wear and tear on your joints and muscles you continuously ignore on a daily basis. Sure, you can go that route, and / or you can take the time, relax, and enjoy taking some time off from the grind and rest and come back stronger. I decided to ignore the signs of lower back pain until my luck ran out and injured my lower back, where I couldn’t get out of bed for almost a week. Those damn squats kept calling me and calling, and I answered with multiple lower back issues and gained some serious weight back. So do not ignore those warning signs.

AND THIS IS CONNECTED TO THE LAST ERROR. WORKING OUT INJURED.

Like i added in my section, working out with a injury is a critical mistake that can send you back…..way back and you really dont want to go back, do you?

STARVING YOURSELF

Yes, it is true you work out more than you put in calories. It is a big step to weight loss, sure, but imagine thinking you could get back up and do it all over again with no fuel in your body. See how far a car can get with no fuel. Test faith and see what it brings to you when you have energy. I bet it would not go very well for you.

Maybe these lessons might not work for you, and you have your own set of rules you set up for yourself, or maybe somebody else has better input that you may dive into more and that is cool too but at the end of the day, you want to be happy whether that is losing the weight for a image change, health choice, challenging yourself, impressing people. Whatever it is, I say good luck with this journey because that is what this is what you are going on, and I wish you the best of luck. Do not lose yourself and your goals. If you gain weight, remember you can also burn it off with dedication, determination, consistency, and a good mindset. You got this, and I know you will achieve those goals.

If you are reading this and what to share your goals, achievements, set of rules, or whatever your journey brought to you, if it was good, great, or bad. Lessons you learned and passed along to others. Thank you for taking the time to read and good luck on your journey.

Dicovering your inner strength

1. Discovering new challenges

If you think you are weak and considering giving up on yourself, I must tell you that would be a mistake on your part. Trust me, I have gone through my pains, my struggles, my defeats, my misery, and my pain, and will continue to go through that every day as I go through my weight loss journey. I let my excuses and weaknesses get in the way of my goal. But one day, I looked in the mirror and told myself, “No more excuses.” It was time to really work. Put in work, do the work, and stop complaining about the work. And damn it was when I rediscovered my inner strength underneath my weak spirit. My spirit grew stronger. Now, I am not finished with my journey by a long shot. I will always be working progress just like every person on this earth. But, finding my inner strength has been the best thing for me, and I can’t tell you how much better I feel about myself. The steps I take.

1. Accepting new challenges.

2. Physically challenging myself

3. Mentally challenging myself

4. Never accepting defeat

5. Removing toxic energy.

There will be a thousand more steps you can take for your journey of inner strength, but for me, those are some of the few steps I take, and there will be more to come. You will grow, and you will learn, and you will endure to build a new you. During the height of the pandemic, I grew scared of the world. I was letting my anxiety defeat me every day. Missing out on great moments and feeling sorry for myself and just eating fast food every day. I’m sitting on my butt watching youtube clips and playing Madden all day. I was wasting away, and here was the real sad part. I had a gym membership and was doing nothing with it. One day, I talked to one of my best friends, who was helping his mom while battling throat cancer. But she kept fighting, not letting her cancer be an excuse, and we had a heart to heart talk, and she told me, “I am very concerned about your health, Devin.” She was talking to me like a concerned mom. And of course I gave her the old classic “I’ll work on it”. She looked me dead in the eyes, held my hand, and said, “No, you won’t.” It broke me because deep down, I knew she was right.

Something in my said to me, “This is your last chance,” and I kept listening to her in my mind with those words, “No, you won’t.” And kept hearing it over and over, and honestly, I got sick of it. I think she knew those words would drive me to do something, and thank goddness, she said those words. The first thing was to help with my mental health, so I seeked therapy. It was a major help. Then, I decided to use my gym membership and push myself to limit that I never thought I could reach. I wanted more; I wanted to keep pushing challenges, pushing for more, and more. I was done with fast food. I began hating my couch, lol. I just wanted to see what limits can go past.

1. 3:30 am 1 hr yoga session

2. 2 hour work out session at gym

3. Finding new challenges

4. Meditation

5. Work on new projects

6. Strict diet plan

7. Do it all over again.

8. Never give up on the goals

9. Endure punsishment and defeats

10. Learn from that punishment and defeats

A little sweat never hurt nobody, and a deafeat doesn’t mean you have to stay defeated. The struggles and losses were massive, but I wanted that, not for the excuses to give, but I wanted to learn. I didn’t mind embarrassing myself at the gym. I wanted to come back to prove myself, “I can f***ing do this.” Everyday, I told myself that and still do. I guess the reason why I am sharing this is because there are people out there going through the same struggles that I am going through, and I want to tell you and all of you. YOU CAN F***ING DO IT!!! All you have to is just get up and try.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog, and if you have experience, please share your story, give helping tips, or just give a motivation speech. Anything for positive energy helps. But in the meantime, thank you and have a good day. Peace.

My top 5 Thanksgiving Movies.

We are now back to the magical time of the holiday season and pretty much everybody second favorite holiday around this time, Thanksgiving. (Well at least everybody i know). As thanksgiving approaches this week i have been seeing more and more christmas movie advertisements coming on more and more along with christmas songs on the radio and it got me thinking, where is the love for thanksgiving movies? Well look no further then this blog because today i am going to give you my top 5 thanksgiving movies. As i did my research for all the thanksgiving movies on Google and Imdb and to my surprise there was over a hundred movies and most of them i have never heard of them or watched but these timeless classics will put a smile on your face one way or the other and some of these movies will surprise you and to start off the list at number 5

This is the one that will catch you by surprise but for me I watch it every year around this time of the year. The thanksgiving dinner scene in this movie is hilarious. The late great John Witherspoon steals the scene along with Bebe Drake. Just this scene alone is great and i promise you will laugh and maybe have some tears. So to me this is a classic Thanksgiving movie and one of my favorite Eddie Murphy movies. And next in the list

For a lot of us, Thanksgiving time is a time for family, happiness and great food but for Rocky “its just thursday” and time for him to take the very shy pretty woman that works at the local pet shop by the name of Adrian Pennino. This holiday classic has it all. A great underdog story, love, toughness, holiday season and Apollo Creed. This is another one i watch every year for this time of the year. And next on the list.

Growing up in a big neighborhood with a large group of kids, we kind of lived out like the Peanuts gang. And as the peanuts gang enjoys the Thanksgiving season, this movie always takes me back to those days and this one is to great to pass up. Sure its short but its long enough to last forever in the heart, no matter how old you get, this one always brings back great memories. And next on the list

This movie is great and Al Pacino is incredible as a blind drunk retired Military man who pretty much makes everybody feel like crap but I love it and the speech that he lays out to the school at the end of movie is oscar worthy in it’s own. Next to movies like “Carlito’s Way” and “Dog Day Afternoon” Pacino performance is up there with those classic roles he performed. Now finally number 1

You can never go wrong with the late great John Candy and Steve Martin and when they shared the screen for this thanksgiving movie, they did not disappoint and this movie is just too funny and I love this movie. Makes you really think, why do they not make movies like this anymore. But overall if you want a great laugh for Thanksgiving. If eating to much at Thanksgiving doesn’t hurt well the comedy from this movie will get the job done. So enjoy and watch it with love ones. You will not regret it.

I hope all of you have a great Thanksgiving season with family, friends and loved ones.and appreciate this time with them and have a great time and be sure to remember the most important thing and that is to save me a plate. Jk but please remember to not take this time for granted and make sure you stay safe. Thanks for taking the time and be sure to share your favorite thanksgiving movies. Until next time Happy Thanksgiving and have a happy Holiday season. See you next time.