Joni Learns to Love Herself No Matter her Size

Joni is the first of many BlogToLose success stories. As I prepared her story I had tear in my eye. She echos many of my own believes and changes I saw in myself. Go Joni! You are AWESOME!

How are you defining your success?

Truly success for me started out as “lose 40 pounds”. I spend a lot of time on my feet as a Registered Nurse and the weight began to take it’s toll on my legs. I knew the answer. I had put the weight on eating all night to stay awake and I knew the only solution was to lose it. But shortly after I started I began to see my habits and realize how much I wasn’t the me I used to be. I began re-define success as health. Healthy choices and healthy living. Shortly after that the definition became physical fitness, as I started to tap into that lost part of myself and I began to achieve each goal I set I began to see the real success... For me it was self-love. Learning to accept yourself whatever your size, whatever you eat, however far or fast you can run. Loving yourself is really the first part of a line of successes. Without that the rest of the success were just things to say I had done.

Which of your personal goals have you achieved?

The 40 pounds are gone. The girl who couldn’t run more than a minute at a time is running a half marathon in April. And the me who couldn’t love myself as myself? She’s leaving too, not as quickly as the others but it’s happening :)

How long did it take you?

I started June 29th. Finished the weight loss in November and the rest is a process :)

What new goals have you set for yourself?

I’m going to get to that marathon. Maybe not in the time frame I wanted (with mutiple injury setbacks) but someday I’ll do it. I’m going to learn that I may not physically EVER be the way I want to look and that’s ok. Expectations have to be realistic too.

What has changed the most about you?

The physical stuff is obvious but it’s the new sense of commitment to ME that is the real change. Investing time in myself so that I have energy to invest in those around me. That’s changed me inside. I’ve made choices in my life recently to reawaken the buried me that got lost under years of choices made for the benefit for others. This has effected my marriage, my relationship with my children and my family in positive ways :)

What did you find hardest about reaching your goal? How did you overcome it?

I was surprised that the bigger challenge wasn’t being hungry or feeling like I wanted something I couldn’t have it was more the constant struggle with wanting to get out (or up) and injuring myself. In fact I guess it’s entirely possible that the injury (a broken leg sustained during training) made me focus on my pain and recovery so much that the weight was secondary. I began to see food less as something to do and more as fuel for my new physique! I found activities that I could do (swimming and elliptical) instead of sitting on the sofa boo-hooing about not being able to run.

How has blogging helped you reach your goals?

Obviously the support of others experiencing the same things is helpful, as well as hearing the “you can do it’s” from those who are, and have, reading the stories of others and knowing you aren’t alone, but the bigger thing about blogging for me is just simply getting it from my head to the paper (or keyboard as it were). The ability to just work it out on paper was huge for me. I learned a lot about myself from writing and reading what I wrote.

Any tips for those that share you goal?

Hang in there. Anything worth having is worth fighting for. It’s not the number of times you fall down, it’s the number of times you get up that matters in the end. :)

PS Hubby lost 35 pounds too and runs 3 miles 3x's/wk!

Awesome Joni, just AWESOME! Click here to check out Joni's BlogToLose Page!