Me, about 3 sizes larger, circa 2010
Around the year 2009 I had grown to about 35 to 40 pounds overweight, and I felt extremely uncomfortable in my skin.
It wasn't about looks as much as it was about having extremely fluctuating energy levels, feeling like I needed naps in the middle of my day, having a lot of mental fog, and struggling to find clothing that fit correctly and comfortably. My inner thighs chaffed when I walked and I had never had that issue my whole life, so the irritation caused by that also made long walks painful and frustrating. I remember ruining pairs of pants from the fabric being rubbed thin on the inner thigh, causing an eventual tear or hole to occur.
Me with my dad's AR-15, 2012, 3 sizes smaller than I was in 2010
Mental Shift Followed By Physical Action Shift
For most my adolescence I had the luxury of being able to consume empty calories that were lacking nutrition but high in sugar and refined carbohydrates without gaining excessive weight, and still being comfortable in a light enough frame. At age 18, with the first desk job I acquired, a slowing metabolism and a lack of any knowledge on how to eat right... that all caught up to me quite fast.
I've posted an article here on Steemit about one of the greatest psychological "tricks" or perspective shifts I had to have in order to have a breakthrough in my ability to consistently alter my lifestyle. The article is called Banishing The Warden, if you haven't read it I highly suggest checking it out.
The difference between that article and what I want to address in this one is one that the above article was strictly a psychological perspective shift, whereas this particular "trick" was an actual physical action, or rather a series of physical actions that--combined with the perspective shift I had--lead to a permanent lifestyle transformation.
2015, still going strong
Limited Time
There are 24 hours in a day, and 7 days in a week, not any more than that... as much as I sometimes wish I had more than that. Our time is finite, and each day presents us with a million different ways to spend that time. Every moment you choose to do one thing and not another, you've made a decision you cannot really take back. That time is spent, for better or worse.
A lot of people forget the important role of your limited time in your day-to-day lifestyle. Your habits, whether they be healthy or unhealthy habits, are consuming your time each and every day. When something is habitual, it has become second nature to you, and trying to suddenly cease doing that particular thing will leave a void of empty time, wherein your brain is left wondering what to do instead. This is why it really doesn't work for most people to simply quit their bad habits. If the focus is only on ceasing the negative, you're still left without any positive to fill the space where the negative once was.
On a hike in Scottsdale, Arizona this morning
The Trick
Since it's true that you have a finite amount of time in your life, and you may have filled that time with unhealthy habits, or maybe just some of that time with one or two unhealthy habits, it follows that you can take up that limited time with something else instead.
Changing an entire lifestyle doesn't happen overnight, and part of the key here is patience.
A lot of people try to overhaul all their old habits with new ones all at once. That has a very low success rate for a reason, it usually doesn't stick since too many new things are introduced at once -- none of which are yet habitual.
The Trick I learned is introducing one new healthy habit into your life at a time.
Instead of telling yourself you have to stop doing all the bad things right now, don't even worry about that. Pick one new thing, that is healthy, pick a time of day to introduce it, a number of days per week, etc. For me it started with a greens smoothie I would have once a day around lunch time. The important thing is to do that one healthy act until it is a habit, then introduce a new thing. Pick things that feel effortless, and introduce them one at a time gradually... until your days are made up of entirely different, healthier habits than you had before.
Since your time is limited, it follows that the bad habits will be edged out of your life just by nature of filling up your limited time with new and healthy habits.
Combine this gradual action approach with the mental shift I presented in my article Banishing The Warden, and you have the formula for how I permanently altered my entire life in relationship to food.