Like I said in the previous chapter, I found photos of women working out. I got a plate of healthy meals as well then I created a calendar. I set a goal that every week, I was going to lose 1kg and every week, when I reached my goal, I would tick it off. One important thing to do when using a vision board is ensuring that you generate practical ways to accomplish the goals. Write them down somewhere, if not, instead of getting inspired, you might get discouraged. If you have huge fitness goals, after completing your assignment you will be a little overwhelmed. You will be asking yourself, how will I lose 50kg? 40kg? 30kg? 15kg….? 5kg?

The fact that 5kg is just one figure doesn’t make it any easier to accomplish. It takes the same mindset to lose 5kg as it takes to lose 50kg. When people ask me how I lost so much weight, I tell them I didn’t start off thinking I would lose 40kg. I started off thinking all I could lose was at most 5kg. I could not even work out for 10 minutes straight without feeling as though I would collapse, so how would losing 40kg be remotely conceivable?

After a lot of trial and error, it dawned on me that I would always feel overwhelmed if I kept focusing on losing 40kg and that is how I came up with a calendar of mini goals. I stopped focusing on how fat I was, what I could not do at the time and focused instead on the little things. I kept saying, just focus on losing 1kg. Just focus on planking for 10 seconds, just focus on doing 100 skips. I stopped worrying that I could not plank for 1min or do 100 skips, or that when I did, it took 30 minutes. I did it anyway! I had it written in my calendar that every week I would lose 1kg and so I did, and every time I ticked my accomplishment off, the more motivated I became. I started losing more weight because I was working out more, speeding up and was constantly challenging myself.

It felt different from when I would stare at 40kg and then plank for 5 seconds and fall to the ground and ask myself “Remi, how will you lose 40kg when you can’t even hold yourself up for just 5 seconds?” I started saying, “Remi, you can now do 5seconds, remember you could not do 3? You are well on your way to

losing 1kg.” It is very important to build your self-motivation skills because there will be days when you will be looking for the walls to tell you to keep going and it won’t, it wouldn’t be able to, even if it wanted to. You have to learn to find ways to keep yourself motivated and inspired always. When the going gets tough, look at your vision board but remember to focus on the small picture.

HOME WORK

Make a calendar with mini goals that eventually sum up to your ultimate goal. Write down the plan, the exact steps you need to take to accomplish the goals and take them.