Your life isn’t going to clear its schedule so you can get healthy.

I think one of the biggest traps in weight loss is waiting for the right time to really get serious. I’ll start after vacation. After the holidays. When work slows down. When the kids go back to school. When the weather gets better. When life isn’t quite so stressful.

The problem is that something else always comes along.

There will always be birthdays, vacations, work trips, holidays, stressful weeks and nights when you didn’t sleep enough. There will be seasons when your schedule is packed and seasons when life throws something at you that you never saw coming. If your plan for getting healthy requires life to cooperate first, you might be waiting a very long time.

I started my weight-loss journey on June 7, 2011. I didn’t know what the next 15 years were going to look like. I certainly couldn’t have predicted all the changes, challenges and setbacks that would eventually come. But I think one of the biggest reasons I’ve been able to maintain the weight loss is that eventually health stopped being something I did when circumstances were right. It became something I figured out how to do while life was happening.

Sometimes that meant a great workout and eating exactly the way I wanted to. Sometimes it meant doing the best I could with the options available. Sometimes it meant getting back on track with the very next decision.

That’s real life.

I think people sometimes believe getting healthy requires this massive overhaul where suddenly you’re meal prepping every Sunday, working out six days a week, sleeping eight hours every night and never touching another piece of pizza.

It doesn’t.

Maybe your starting point is walking 20 minutes three times this week. Maybe it’s cooking dinner at home instead of going through the drive-thru. Maybe it’s drinking water instead of another soda. Maybe it’s finally walking into that gym you’ve been intimidated to enter.

The important part is that you stop waiting for circumstances to become perfect before you begin.

Because here’s something I’ve learned over the last 15 years: life doesn’t get out of the way.

You learn how to take care of yourself while it’s happening.

For the last 11 weeks, I’ve written a lot about mindset because I believe that’s where sustainable change starts. Motivation comes and goes. Perfection isn’t required. Comparison will steal your confidence. One bad decision doesn’t require a restart, and reaching a goal weight isn’t a finish line.

At some point, though, you have to take all of that and do something with it.

Not Monday.

Not January 1.

Not after vacation.

Today.

You don’t need the perfect plan, the perfect schedule or the perfect circumstances.

Start with the life you have, from exactly where you are, and build from there.

#WeightLossWednesday #WeightLoss #Mindset #HealthyLifestyle #Consistency #HealthyHabits #JustStart