Get motivated. Stay Motivated. #UntilItsDone

I often get questions on social media asking me things that lead me to believe people think I’ve held some special magical secret to accomplishing my fitness goals. They want to know exactly what I eat in a day, how much cardio I do and “how long did it take me.” I get it. I’m one of those people too. I fall into that trap when I see someone who has accomplished an incredible level of fitness. I’m curious what they did to get there, until I snap out of it and remember, they truly are not special either. Don’t get me wrong, I am special, you are special, we are all special! We all possess that “special” factor however, not everyone activates it. What separates me from the next woman who is struggling? I just keep going. I screw up, plenty, but I just keep going. I keep showing up. I show up to cardio. I show up to the weight room and put in serious work. I push my body past where it’s comfortable. In times that I’ve achieved incredible results it's only because I’ve stuck to my diet goals day after day after day. I’ve made tremendous sacrifices. If I didn’t have time, I found the time. If I didn’t have the energy, I found the energy. I had to do a lot of planning and prepping. There are lots of times I didn’t plan accordingly and missed workouts or get caught without the right food and that has felt awful. I really dislike the feeling of letting myself down. Truthfully, I’m the only one who gets in my own way! So I remember that feeling and I make sure I plan appropriately next time to stay on track. Life is going to happen. Things aren’t always going to go perfectly but the more compliant I can be with my plans, the closer I stay to my goals. 

The mental aspect plays a huge part when trying to make big weight loss changes. Being consistent is your best friend. We all start out motivated with that same Monday morning fire but as the week goes by that fire can fizzle and it’s easy to start next Monday again. I was tired of starting Monday. I was tired of not fitting into my clothes and feeling self conscious. I was tired of going clothes shopping, going into a dressing room and leaving in near tears because not one pair of jeans fit the way I hoped. So something I did almost every morning at 5am when I was tired and cold and didn’t want to wake up for my morning cardio was pull that feeling up into my mind. I would take my mind back to that dressing room and how I felt standing there, unhappy about myself. How it felt to not fit into that pair of pants I wanted so badly. I would fire myself up and I would literally jump out of bed to get to my workout before my three babies would wake up. I knew If I missed the opportunity to exercise, I would feel terrible. Early in the morning was my chance to work on ME. So I took that time every day. Day after day the efforts added up and the results showed up because I was doing the work! 

The same thing goes for your nutrition. So often people get overwhelmed with going on a diet. The thought of a diet and  feeling deprived is scary. You feel like you have to make these changes and you’ll be missing out on life. This type of thinking is what keeps many people from accomplishing their goals. I like to take the approach of not “taking away” things you love but swapping some things out for healthier options, consistently, and see how it goes. When my children were in preschool, Devotion Nutrition had just launched and I was competing in Figure. Another mother from the school wanted to fit into a dress for her son’s bar mitzvah. She asked me for diet advice and told me she struggled with late night cravings and snacking. I sold her a tub of Devotion protein and told her from now on to simply make a big thick, filling protein shake or protein fluff ice cream at night when those cravings come on. Stop snacking on the ice cream and cookies and swap it out for a shake or a late night protein pancake. That’s all she did for weeks. That one little tweak to her eating habits added up to big changes! She started to add in exercise and before she knew it the bar mitzvah arrived and she fit into the dress of her dreams! Sometimes people don’t realize just making small yet consistent nutritional lifestyle tweaks are the ones that add up to big results!  

Our company hashtag is Until It’s Done. When you start to realize that the only way to get results and KEEP results means you have to be truly devoted to your healthy lifestyle. When you are Devoted, it’s never done.