4XLT

Today’s Weigh-In: 325.8 pounds
Days till Goal: 3
Pounds to Go: 5.8

With my recent mini mental reboot, I’ve been thinking once again of the question of why I’m losing weight and working so hard at changing my life. What a nice surprise to see I’m not alone in asking the existential questions among fat loss / health bloggers!

Steve at Weight Loss Weapons recently touched on the motivating factor for fat loss and lifestyle change:

The success I have achieved so far was not because I wanted to lose weight for myself. It was because I wanted more for my kids, more for my wife and more for my friends/teammates.

More in the sense that I wanted my kids to be more active, … to have a father that was there for all the best moments in their lives. I can’t do that if I’m dead from a heart attack!

For my wife…I wanted her to have a husband that she could be proud of and one that could give her a more fun and active life. That’s hard to do from the couch!

Then, I stumbled onto Tricia at Girly Jock who wrote about the same thing:

Simply put, I work out because for the longest time my siblings made fun of my lack of athleticism. So any way that I can prove them wrong, and even show them up is a huge deal to me. Even my parents comment about how much more I’m doing compared to when I was a kid. And it’s odd, because even my anorexia had a partial root in wanting to prove them wrong (they also told me that all I did was sit around and stuff my face.)…

Now I work out to be strong and tough and a badass.

So What About Me?

I’ve always said, to myself and to others, that I am losing weight for myself. To change my life. To become better than what I have been. For me and for no one else.

I’ve got a fair number of minor, tangential reasons for losing weight (wearing normal sized clothes, fitting better in airplanes and small cars, being okay with my photographs, etc). But beyond all of them is my deeper desire to change my life and identity.

Not so much in any weird or crisis meltdown way, but just that I’m tired of being the token fat guy / big brother figure. I don’t want to be Friar Tuck; I want to be Robin Hood (or maybe the Sheriff of Nottingham – he gets to have a lot of fun, doesn’t he?)

And let me be completely honest here and throw it out there in the open: I want to look good for the ladies! Dangerous and rugged Robin Hood, not lazy & rotund Friar Tuck, right? I’ve been in the realm of super-obese, 400+ pounds the past five years. Is it any coincidence that I’ve not been in a serious relationship that whole time?

I think not.

I know a big, big part of it all this work of lifestyle change is all in my head, especially when it comes to the girls. But, my size and weight problem feeds a lot of my wonky perspective of my self-esteem and self-image.

But I don’t think they’re two separate issues. Confidence and fat loss really do feed one another. I’m finding that as I lose weight, I get more confident (about life in general and not just with the girls). And as I get more confident, that bravado spills over into the health arena as an unshakable confidence that I can change my life. That leads to more fat loss, which starts the cycle over again.

But the bottom line is that I’m sick and repulsed by who I used to be. I didn’t care. I was lazy. I didn’t do anything hard. I lived with my heart on my sleeve. I was soft. I trusted people too easily. I wasn’t willing to work hard for anything. I was pitiful.

I’m not returning to that old life – ever again. It’s more than just the fat loss. It’s more than the 115 pounds I’ve lost so far. It’s more than the 85 or so I’ve got left to go. It’s my life; it’s the very way I view myself. It’s how others view me. It’s why I got the 440 tattoo on my forearm.

So what about you? What’s your fat loss motivation? If you’ve made considerable progress, how has your motivations changed?