M to the O to the VATION!!! MOTIVATION, how do we get it & keep it?!?!

Well now that we've been through my "how'd you get here" story its time to get down to the meat & potatoes, the nitty & the gritty of this whole health & fitness thing and wShat better place to start than at the beginning which is MOTIVATION!!!

• How do I get motivated to start?
• What do I do to stay motivated?
• When the going gets tough where am I going to draw my motivation from? 
• Now that I've reached my goal what's going to motivate me to continue?
• and the list goes on. . . ..

So lets just jump in with figuring out how to even get motivated and get this ball rolling. Well one thing you will learn about me is I have a MILLION sayings, some that are originally mine and others I have borrowed from people & places. My FAVORITE saying pertains to our current topic about MOTIVATION. . . during this journey regardless if you're single, married, have kids, no kids, employed, unemployed or any other category or definition you can find to describe yourself you need to adopt the principle of

SELF FIRST NOT SELFISH!!!

So lemmi explain what that means and what it has to do with our nemesis Motivation. No matter what you're trying to accomplish in life be it better health & fitness, a better job, college education, more money, peace at work / peace at home, happiness and anything else you can name you have to start with SELF!!  If you focus on yourself and the goals at hand and take care of yourself you can better accomplish the goals and tasks that lay before you. For example . . . you want to be able to provide better for yourself and your family. In order to do that you may need a more education to get a better job to make more money to ultimately take care of your family. Well you can't do that if you don't focus on yourself and accomplish the goal of working towards that better education which will in turn put you in the proper position for the better job, which will ultimately result in more money to support your family. Well its the same thing with your health & fitness. It doesn't matter if your goal is a big one like being healthy for your kids and your family so you can be around longer to enjoy them or a bit more personal like fitting in that dress (women) or that suit (men) for a function, or to look good for a reunion or upcoming event you at least have a starting point. Now that you have the reasoning and the goal in mind you have to attack it and make it come to life. In order to do that you have to focus a bit more on YOURSELF!! Again this is NOT selfish, this is self first, because if YOUtake better care of YOU in whatever facet that may be you can now take better care of others and those important to you.

Now I'll share with you what initially motivated me. When I became preggers I was already heavier than what I thought I was and I was floored. Unfortunately the pregnancy weight gain was inevitable and in the end I was in a place I really didn't want to be. After having Kyndal I was THRILLED to have such a beautiful baby and to be a mom but ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED with the way I looked. Much to my dismay I didn't immediately do anything about it and then that day came . . . I saw a picture of me and my stomach was so big my arms rested on it as if it was a shelf. WHAT?!? IS THIS REAL OR IS THIS A CRUEL JOKE?!? That's when I decided "The buck STOPS here"!!! It was time for me to hold myself accountable and responsible for where I currently find myself and do something about it. So my initial motivation was partially vain . . . I wanted to look at myself in the mirror and like what was looking back at me. I no longer wanted to be overweight. I no longer wanted to rock myself to get out of a car, to not be able to roll around on the floor with Kyndal and play without my knees hurting, to be able to go up and down the stairs in my house without being labored. And that was all it took to get my ball rolling.

So what will it take to get you MOTIVATED and get your ball rolling?!?! There are a million things that you can use to motivate you to get started but one of the easiest things we can do is first determining what the ULTIMATE goal will be, then once we have that lets break it down into several smaller goals and we will use each one of them as our MOTIVATION. As you start accomplishing the smaller goals your mojo  gets going and that keeps you energized to move on to the next goal then the next and before you know it you've reached what seemed to be the impossible the unreachable final frontier.

Now that we're motivated to get started "What do we do to stay motivated??" Stay tuned for the next blog as we tackle our next step to maintain our MOTIVATION. . . .Until then talk to ya later

KQ

Part 3: Let's Get Real & Get Right

Sorry for the delay on part 3 but here I am and here's the rest of the nitty gritty!!!

So I was 20 months in and NOW WHAT?!?! Fortunately I had taken my time and built an AWESOME foundation for my new lifestyle and this wasn't going to be just some overnight wham bam thank you ma'am situation. This was now my new life and I was living it and LOVING IT!!
 

I have always been a competitive person and thrived off of that motivation and excitement that competition brings. With that being the case I decided to run track again and it was full steam ahead. . . at least in my mind it was b/c it sure wasn't on the track LOL!! Turns out it was a slow and long road but I took it on no matter how painful it was and I kept pushing. Here I am 30 years old and I'm trying to get back out on the track. Things were slow going at first but they eventually picked up and everything was GREAT!! Unfortunately I had to sidetrack that dream because of work and family after I invested 2 years into it. But hey no biggie on to the next goal.

So during the 2 years of training to hit the track I was privileged enough to participate in an infomercial and how amazing was it that!!! For now we'll leave out what product I was endorsing b/c the infomercial has been pulled and will be redone soon but PLEASE BELIEVE its an honest infomercial and I followed the program and to this day I'm still following the program to this day!! I have to admit this was the absolute BEST EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE!! I was afforded the opportunity to share my story, to meet ladies I've been corresponding with through the internet for years and ultimately realize this fitness thing was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was so overwhelmed by this experience I spent half the day crying because to think about where I came from to where I was that day it was just unbelievable. Here are a few shots from that day

After that experience it was ON!! So in 2009 I spent the beginning portion of the year preparing for my first figure show. I was working harder than ever. Hitting the track, gym, cardio, nutrition on point. . . THE WHOLE 9. Well needless to say I'm human and "something" backfired and a few days after Easter I started noticing my weight was increasing instead of decreasing. All of a sudden I went from 155lbs to 171lbs within a matter of weeks. WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HAPPENING?!?!? This was not the plan and I was DEVASTATED. Heck devastated isn't even the word, my world was completely WRECKED. All I could see and hear in my mind was all the negative things people had said to me in the past about my weight when  I was heavier and I questioned myself like never before. I immediately panicked and thought "Oh No I'm going to be 200+ again then what do I do". Needless to say I have GREAT friends and a GREAT boyfriend and they all slapped me back to reality and explained to me I need to let the past go and I had a bump in the road and now I just need to move forward and do what needs to be done to get back to where I was. Unfortunately it took me several months to get my mind right again but eventually I did and here I am back and better!!

All of that being said is to explain that WE ALL go through up's & down's. We are all human and things happen out of our control BUT if you have built a strong foundation and know what to do you can easily get back on track. I will say I learned a good lesson during that situation which is having your mind in the right place is more than half the battle. So thanks to a friend and to the Bible here's one of my favorite sayings that I will end this blog on . . . 

TO CHANGE THE MIND YOU MUST CHANGE THE CULTURE AND TO CHANGE THE CULTURE YOU MUST CHANGE THE MIND!!

Love ya
KQ

Part 2: The year of MAJOR changes

I was officially on FIRE after my first year back to being healthy and in shape. I was very conscious about what I ate, what I drank, how I worked out, my cardio, I left nothing out. And several more months later in July '06I took what I felt were HOT pictures considering there I'd come from 17months earlier. I mean I was looking like something and somebody for a change. I had a shape to my legs, my waist was slimming down and I started having definition in my arms. BOY WAS I EVER EXCITED. But still I didn't stop here. At this point I was working out DAILY. I was eating AT LEAST 5-6 meals a day which consisted of lean protein, complex carbs and veggies. Of course I'm human I had my cheat days but after several months of operating this way it was almost like a cheat day wasn't really a cheat. And it turned from an entire day to a meal or snacks but compared to where I'd been before my cheats weren't that bad. I came from a place where I ate Oreo's, drank Pepsi, ate entire Totino's pizza's for lunch, made things for dinner like Hamburger Helper and anything else starchy that was HIGH in carbs and FAT!! By the way I HATE Oreo's & Pepsi but I ate and drank them because they were in the house - so here's your FIRST step. . . eliminate these items from your grocery list thus eliminating them from YOUR HOUSE!! If you don't have these items in your house and you have a craving for them that means you have to get up get dresses and go get them. Having to put forth so much effort at random times of day and night will make you think twice about eating such unhealthy items. In order to clean our bodies up on the outside we have to start with the inside and that starts with what we put in our mouths. Now this may not be for everyone but I also eliminated cheese & milk from my diet and obtained my calcium from alternate sources one of which being VITAMINS.

Now at this point I am a full fledged full steam ahead BUFFMOTHER. I'm blogging on a daily basis and receiving all kinds of healthy tips and information from women who had now become my friends. My workouts were going great and the changes were happening in a way I had never expected. Needless to say some Life situations kept me from competing but the dream to walk across that stage never left my heart. October 2006 I felt it was time to take one more picture to see where I was and I was floored. Especially when I compared them to my starting point. In 20months I had completely changed my LIFE by changing my habits and my behavior and it paid off in an astronomical way!!

 Those 20 months were the foundation of it all. They were the beginning hard months that taught me a lesson about myself and about my will power over my cravings and my mind. The journey of weight loss is not an easy journey and if it was everyone would be doing it and loosing weight at the drop of a dime, but they're not. It takes MOTIVATION, DEDICATION, DETERMINATION, KNOWLEDGE AND SUPPORT to achieve your goal of weight loss and I'm here to provide you all of that and MORE!!! I'm going to bid farewell right now and go workout myself but when I come back we will finish this story and move into the nitty gritty with Part 3: Let's Get Real & Get Right!! How I got to where I am today and how I will get to where I belong in the future.
Love Ya, KQ

Here's my first entry. . Part 1: The beginning of a WONDERFUL Journey

So I'll share a little bit about myself. I'm a 32 year old mother of 1 beautiful daughter named Kyndal. Prior to having kids I was a collegiate athlete where I weighed somewhere between 150 - 160lbs and wore about a size 10 and thought I was in good shape. After college I kept working out consistently for the first year then slowly that began to dwindle but I was still fooling myself and believing  I was in good shape because my stomach was flat and in the mirror I looked good. As the time went by the weight started increasing little by little by little and eventually I weighed in around 180 +. Again I wasn't all that moved by it for some reason, then suddenly I became ill with a terrible stomach virus and lost 25-30lbs in a few weeks and I was back down to 150-155lbs and couldn't have been happier. As you all know that weight eventually came back and it came back with some extra friends and by the time I weighed in at my first prenatal appointment which was only about 6wks into my pregnancy I was 192lbs. I WAS ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATED!! I already knew I would gain weight due to the pregnancy which I had no control over and I am starting at 192lbs?!?!? We will fast forward to the end of the pregnancy and I finally weighed in around 245-250lbs WOWOWOW!! A few days after her delivery I weighed in around 230lbs which was just unbelievable to me. I kept hoping the weight would come off with breastfeeding but it didn't come off the way I expected and that was due to the fact that I was totally out of shape at the beginning of the pregnancy and I couldn't expect breastfeeding alone to resolve the problem I had.
Six months after having Kyndal I was watching TV one evening and an infomercial came on for The FIRM. Well orginally being from Columbia, SC I knew all about The FIRM and what a good program they had, so I quickly ordered it because there was no way I was going to the gym looking like this. I couldn't have been happier to receive my little treat in the mail. When it arrived I immediately weighed myself in and  I was still over 200lbs. . . 225lbs to be exact. That was the night when I took these pictures: February 2005. I was completely and utterly DEVASTATED again!! Even looking at them today I am floored and almost to the point of tears thinking back to that day. I didn't even recognize myself! WHO HAD I BECOME? CAN THE REAL KENISHA PLEASE STAND UP?!?! I mean what was seriously going on! It was time to devise a plan and CHANGE THE GAME!
I trained at home for a few months using The Firm and began loosing some weight but I knew I had to kick it up a notch and get back into the gym. At this point I had enough knowledge to know the lifting and cardio would help me get this goal accomplished quicker. In the evenings during this time I was also flooding myself with knowledge and information. I Googled almost everything in creation to find my answers and somehow I stumbled across Michelle Berger AKA "BUFFMOTHER" at the time it was just a Yahoo group but I quickly joined and read posts and information until I was overwhelmed and in tears. Here were other women like me who had children and they were FIT & FABULOUS! I was officially on a mission. That weekend I joined the gym and the journey had now been kicked up a notch.

Needless to say I was slapped in the face with another revelation that I was worse off then I thought fitness wise. I would go LATE at night as to keep from seeing people I knew and ride the bike, train on the elliptical and run on the treadmill and please believe when I tell you I was sucking wind like there was no tomorrow and my legs were on fire as if they were burning from the inside. I had never experienced anything like this in my life. I HONESTLY couldn't do more than 5min on the elliptical before I started huffing like I smoked all the cigarettes ever made in North Carolina. But I didn't quit! I began getting more and more knowledge from Michelle and the other Buffmothers and I started seeing changes. About 5months later I was seeing some progress as displayed the picture to the left from July '05.

Still not acceptable but at least I was starting to have a resemblance of some sort of shape. Don't know what shape that was but hey I had it, LOLOL!! I kept flooding myself with knowledge and learning from Michelle who had turned out to be an absolute GOD Send!! She is the sweetest person I could have even encountered on this journey and she assured me I could make it and I would reach my goals as long as I continued working hard. During this time I experienced a lot of plateaus, so I knew I still needed to turn up the volume but what could  I do. . . . . I decided to do like a lot of my other Buffmother's and COMPETE in a figure competition and really get this ball rolling. This was around October  and I took another picture. Looking back on it I was still looking like a linebacker but at the time I was seeing progress. Unfortunately I'm not 100% sure of my weight at this time but it wasn't where I wanted to be that's all I know.

I began learning more and more about nutrition and the affects healthy eating will play in speeding up my progress and I was HOOKED. I mean I was reading every website, blog, journal, magazine, government nutritional website you name it I read it and I have notebooks, torn out pages, notes to myself and the whole 9 to prove it. I was just becoming a huge sponge and it awakened something in me that I thought was gone and that was my passion for fitness. When I finished high school and entered college I wanted to major in sports fitness but not knowing what I would do with a career like that I went into computers and put that on the back burner. Things began progressing much better and by March 06 I no longer had extreme love handles and honches. I know you're like what in the world are honches LOLOLOL well its another word for saddlebags. So I got brave and put on a 2 piece swimsuit while on vacation. Looking back again a decision slightly gone wrong but hey I'd come a long way BABY in 1yr and 1mo.  At this point I could accept how I was looking that since I had come from 225lbs in my first picture. Unfortunately I can't dig up any pictures from me at my heaviest and that's probably because I was avoiding the cameras for good reason. So we will end part 1 of my journey here and begin with part 2: The Year of Major Change!!