The shame of getting started

You need to go on a diet but you don't know where to start and you don't know when to start.  But more importantly and tragically you don't want to admit that you need to or tell anyone that you are dieting.  The hardest and most difficult and most shameful part of getting started is admitting that you need to.  Admitting that you need to start a diet or as I like to call it, lifestyle change is admitting that you have already failed.  Whether it is failing to maintain your ideal weight, size or visual you have already failed.  This is discouraging enough because who wants to fail again?  Guess what?  If you never admit defeat and say that what you are doing is not working or what you have tried did not work you will be failing yourself for the rest of your life.

Many people do not want to tell anyone when they begin a lifestyle change which is understandable.  If you tell people they will know if you don't make it.  They will know you are cheating when you eat that pizza at the office on Friday.  They will know if you fail . .  . again.  When I first began my change I didn't tell anyone either for these same reasons.  Part of me was embarrassed and part of me was afraid of failure.  In fact even after I started and was seeing results and sticking to my plan I still did not tell anyone until people directly asked me what it was that I was doing.  My opinion is that you do not need to announce to the world that you don't feel good about yourself or that you want to lose 10lbs.  Announce it to yourself.  You need to do it for you.  Not your boyfriend or your sister or your husband, do it because you want to feel better and see the difference.  

Getting started on a diet and exercise routine sucks for sure I won't lie.  The exercise part was okay for me because I was already a regular gym goer.  I was going to the gym and accomplishing nothing but I was going so now at least I had a purpose.  But the diet was my fear and gave me anxiety like you would not believe.  I didn't want to eat "healthy", I didn't want to watch what I ate.  I wanted to go out with friends, drink, order pizza, eat ice cream and basically stay overweight. 

My saving grace in all of this was discovering on online diet and nutrition program called, X Training.(www.trainwithx.com)  X Training is a husband and wife team with years of experience in the fitness industry who up until 6 or 7 months ago worked exclusively with natural bodybuilders.  Then they realized that regular people need help too, which is where you and I come in.  I contacted X Training, sent in pics, filled out some questionnaires, bought a food scale and I was set.  This was in December of 2011.  

When I first started I only told my immediate family and my boyfriend.  The first two weeks were two of the most frustrating weeks of my life.  X Training does not tell you WHAT to eat but they tell you how many Carbs, Fats and Proteins you should consume each day and you fill in the blanks to hit those goals.  They also provided me with 8 weeks of workouts to do on my own, at my gym with guidance in the form of online videos etc if I had questions about what something was.  But like I said going to the gym was not the problem, food was and I struggled.  

Never before in my life had I planned my meals beyond bringing a sandwich to work with me.  The first week or so I would just pile random food into a lunch bag and eat as the day went on.  Only to get home at the end of a 12 hour day and find out that I needed to eat 800 more calories 75% of which was protein!  Not only was I not eating enough in general I really was not eating enough protein.  Needless to say it was a struggle.  

After the first week I realized I had to do something else or I would lose my mind.  I bought containers with built in ice packs (fit and fresh) and sat down at the computer (myfitnesspal.com) and created 5 meals to eat each day that met my goals.  I then packed these into containers, 5 days at a time and took them with me everywhere I went.  This is when my life changed for the better . . . forever.