I’ve been overweight for a few years now and I’m not getting any younger so it started to give me a little concern. I’ve been blessed with decent health and even though I’ve been overweight, I’ve always kind of kept in good shape. I play basketball, occasionally go to the gym, ride my bike and play with my kids and other activities that include a little exercise. Problem was I could never drop any weight and I was nearing 220 lbs. That’s a lot for a normal sized 5′ 8″ guy of my age. I would drop to 215 or 210 and maybe even the occasional 208 just to go back up to 215 or 220 in the same week. I would diet and try not eating different foods together or not eating anything at all and all the other ideas I could find about losing weight but nothing was working. That was actually de-motivating and made me feel worse and brought down my self-esteem. I just couldn’t get motivated to continue working out, going to the gym or following any of the dieting ideas I had tried.

It all became a chore instead of motivation. I was desperate to figure out how to motivate myself to lose weight. I really did not want to have related health risks and the major thought was that I would like to see my kids grow up and get married. Even that wasn’t enough to motivate me. Then I heard a wise man say that motivation doesn’t create action, action creates motivation. I started thinking of ways to get the action going to see if that in fact would create motivation. Now my way isn’t for everyone but it worked for me and it can work for you. First thing I did, and this was hard, I cancelled my membership to the gym. That was one of the things I was beating myself up about because every night I would come home and not go to the gym. Then I would say I’ll just get up early in the morning and go. That was a little motivation until I got up in the morning and didn’t go. Can you see this vicious cycle appearing and this was just one of a couple. After cancelling my gym membership I hit the local garage sales in search of some used inexpensive weights and a bicycle. I just want to say here, if you don’t already garage sale you should because you can find some amazing gems in amongst the rubbish. That’s another story for another day. I hit one garage sale and found a guy selling some brand new weights and bars to put them on. For $ 30.00 I got a bunch of weights and bars. I hit another garage sale and found a fairly new used bike. It needed some oil and I cleaned it up and it was ready to go. My whole investment was what the gym would have cost me for 2 months and I eliminated that $ 35.00 monthly gym payment that was causing me to lose motivation. You see by getting rid of that burden I actually turned it into a motivation, cool huh. But now, will I use the equipment I purchased. So I bought a book called the Diet Solution and armed with my weights and my bike set out on a journey to not just lose weight but to lose inches. See I found out that by working out and riding my bike I would be adding muscle along with shedding weight. Well, muscle has weight to so as I lost weight and gained muscle I wasn’t really losing pounds at first. I was however losing inches and after a little while the weight also started dropping. I also made a few changes in diet and eating habits but I will write about those in another posting.

So as I was losing inches, I had no gym membership I wasn’t using, I started riding my bike for 30 to 50 minutes every night for 6 day’s and one night off. I started lifting my weights in the house while watching TV. I started doing jumping jacks and push ups 2 or 3 times a day and actually pushing myself to do a couple more every time, talk about motivation. It really is true, the action I was taking on a daily basis was giving me a true undying motivation and nothing could take that away. This is how to motivate yourself to lose weight. I no longer consider exercise or working out a burden and I never diet. I’ve made some life changes and each day I am motivated and look forward to staying healthy. The key here is, I don’t have to motivate myself anymore. I’m always motivated now. Here’s to your healthy future.