#fitocracy

Cool! joerevans shared his post:

4000 point workout today, 600 points short of the next level. Those 600 are going to have to wait.

(via Fitocracy)

Fitocracy has helped hundreds of thousands of people reach the next level of fitness. Sign Up free.

Seven Years ago Sunday, I hit what I thought was rock bottom. I was morbidly obese at almost 450 pounds. I struggled with depression and felt like a failure and a hypocrite. Not even my closest friends and family knew the struggles I was enduring and covering up with a food addiction. I had a moment that resulted in a desire to change and to live my best life. It started with two realizations:
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1) I deserved a better life.
2) I had the power to get that better life.
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I started with small changes: no white flour, no sugar, zero processed foods. The pounds started to come off and as I learned more about myself, nutrition and fat loss, I adopted the #paleo diet. After one year, I was down 200 pounds and eventually shed obesity and built that better life.
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The journey didn’t end the day I hit my goal weight, that was just the first act. Losing my weight wasn’t the only or even the last goal, it was one on a path to self mastery and true joy. It eliminated so many limitations and proved to myself that nothing would hold me down or back anymore. If you struggle with obesity, you can do this too. Live your best life. Don’t be overwhelmed. Start with one pound and then go for another. You’ve got this. -
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#Tiniertim#paleo#workout#weightloss#gym#diet#wod#fitocracy#weightlifting#squat#igers#instagood#fitspo#motivation#inspiration#SkinTight#looseskin#whole30#obesity#realitytv#plasticsurgery#transformationtuesday#dad#obesity#love#confidence (at Los Angeles, California)

QUESTION OF THE DAY: are your daily activities bringing you closer to your goals?

“I don’t have time” is an excuse that is as old and timeless as time itself. We are all given the same 24 hours each day with which to work. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we have time for whatever we want to.

I try never to say, “I don’t have time to…”; Instead I try and say, “I don’t make time for…”. The reality is that I HAVE the time to catch up on the last three hundred seasons of a tv show but I don’t make time for it.

Life is a series of decisions between priorities. In order to become our truest selves, it’s important to take time to assess our values, priorities, hopes, dreams and goals and then use this understanding like a GPS to guide you to your destination: your greatest self.

Want to find your results? Start by losing your excuses.

What do you believe about yourself and the things that hold you back? When no one is looking or listening, how would you silently describe yourself and the way you feel?

The me on the left felt weaker than the problems in my life. I was terrified of the future, regretful of the past and too distracted faking sanity for the present. Sometimes I ate to distract myself from my own obesity. I’d punish myself for being obese by binging and I’d recover from the binge related guilt with food.

There is a lot that took place from the time I was Old Tim to now. But the first and most empowering thing that happened was a simple declaration: “I need help.”

I found help in encouraging friends, loving family and supportive communities. I found professional help in therapy, coaches and mentors.

Why are we ashamed to ask for help? We all need it, we all want it and with the exception of sociopaths, we all feel better giving it. Even today, I find help in my sweetheart @gracegulley and other family and friends. I can’t do it alone, but I can do anything with them.

It’s never too late to raise your hand. Don’t have anyone? Shoot me a DM. #Squadgoals

Which pain will you pick?

Overcoming obesity requires as great a commitment as it took apathy for me to become obese but in the opposite direction. I was in constant pain. I had heartburn that I thought was cardiac arrest but never went to the doctor to find out (ignorance is bliss). My knees cracked like a bag of popcorn underneath me. My back ached and my soul felt defeated.

Losing weight hurt too. My muscles were sore all the time, the first 30 days adjusting to eating like a “normal” person felt like I was starving because I didn’t understand nutrition yet. My first workouts were embarrassing and because I was ashamed, I didn’t tell anyone so I hardly had any support.

You don’t wake up successful in anything worth happening. You wake up and FIND success. You set your alarm for 4:30 and and get to the gym. You food prep on Sunday. You plan your work and you work your plan. You feel the soreness for the first 30 days.

And after a while, you finally feel like you’re truly alive.

You trade the pains of regret and neglect for the pains of discipline. Discipline becomes strength. Strength becomes mastery and mastery brings true and lasting joy.

And my dear friends, joy tastes a hell of a lot better than Doritos.

You get to pick between the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. Tylenol only works on one of them.

The pain you choose will decide the picture you see.

COURAGE is not the absence of fear.

Anyone can perform when they aren’t afraid, when there is zero chance they’ll fail or when there’s nothing on the line. The times that will take you and your life from good to great. Fear isn’t the enemy.

No one tells stories about the time they didn’t take the chance. No one brags about the time they didn’t talk to that girl or the time they played it safe.

Courage doesn’t win match but courage always puts us on the path that will lead to finding your authentic self.

That being said, fear is not the enemy. Fear and negativity are like heavy weights on us. Persevering with them, using them, lifting them and using their resistance will create added strength and focus.

What should you do with FEAR? Don’t hide from him. You can invite him to come with you and acknowledge him:

“Hello Fear. How are you my old friend? I feel you poking around in there. Thanks for coming but we’re doing this anyway.”

Then get to work. Let fear come for the drive so you can take the carpool lane but don’t let him drive.

That’s what courage looks like and we are the COURAGEOUS ONES.

Where you attention goes, your energy flows! There will always be reasons why you “can’t” or shouldn’t or won’t do something.

There are a million reasons why I didn’t want to workout today. The love of my life is in Paris and I miss her more than breathing. I have so much going on at work and in life and being a single dad and… well I could go on forever.

For years I told myself that I couldn’t lose weight: slow metabolism, foods go straight to my hips, genetics, etc.. One day I found my reason why and it fueled me enough to take one walk. I put myself into counseling and began to understand what really motivated me to eat and live and behave the way that I did. Once I understood my triggers, I began to seek out positive triggers.

What songs, people, actions and behaviors inspire me to go to the gym? Embrace those.

What songs, people, actions and behaviors inspire me to binge or give up? Abandon those.

Where you attention goes, your energy flows!

YES YOU CAN.

“I can’t” is a self fulfilling prophecy and oftentimes, it’s also a lie. We say I can’t instead of “I haven’t been able to in the past” or “it’s not a big enough priority” because it’s safer to use language that makes action a matter of capability instead of willingness and motivation.

Start your week by assuming the feeling of a wish fulfilled. Visualize yourself every minute already at your goal. What would today look like if you already knew you would succeed?

You can and you will achieve your greatest dreams if you can only act as if you’ve already achieved them. In my mind, I hit my goal weight on the first day of my transformation, it just took my body a while to catch up.

If today is your day 1, start with vision, act as if achieving it is a given and never let these words escape your lips again.

You can.

What created the motivation to transform? What is the catalyst for this kind of a complete 180?

A lot of my friends that knew un-Tinier Tim are always surprised to find out I’m exactly the same person I was before I started this journey over 6 years ago.

Same huge heart that feels too much sometimes.
Same sharp wit that is quick to turn playfully self deprecating.
Same desire to serve and to give.

But something must have changed to create this monumental of a life adjustment, right? How did I go from compulsive food addiction to an example for others who struggle?

The dreams and desires for a healthy life were always there. The ability didn’t grow and I sure as heck didn’t find a miracle pill or shake. I spent my life surrounded by people who believed in and encouraged me. Nothing had changed there either.

I tell my tennis ball story not because that was the inspiration to change or to add. The tennis ball didn’t add anything to my life, dreams or desires.

No, instead the tennis ball took away something from me: the self-limiting belief that I didn’t deserve to be loved by others or myself and to become my truest and greatest self.

So many of us set goals to achieve great things to earn the praise or respect from others or ourselves: The only way I’ll love myself is if I lose weight, get that raise, get the guy/girl, etc..

Newsflash: conditional love is not worth having. It’s the cubic zirconia of love affairs. From far away you can’t tell the difference but deep down you just don’t feel the same special feeling you do for a God made gemstone.

Conditional love leads to conditional change. Conditional change at best only works as long as external forces combine for our good. Lose the weight for a girl and you gain it back the day she’s gone. Do it for the summer and it only lasts for the summer.

But when you make a forever change in the way you see yourself, that’s when the magic changes. Your life becomes a product of your new standards. Someone doesn’t see you for the complete bad ass you know you are? No skin off your back: they aren’t ready for the incredible you that you are. Someone doesn’t treat you with the unconditional respect every human deserves? Oh well. You love you and become yourself every day.

Not everyone will love you when you become yourself. But the only people that matter will love you unconditionally and radically.

And the one who will love you most is that gorgeous soul in the mirror. Love em back on #TransformationTuesday.

#EmbraceYoSelf

I have always struggled as the “fat kid”. My search for happiness led me to food and I still couldn’t find it.

One of the greatest lies we tell ourselves is that our happiness is conditional:

“If I get that promotion at work, I’ll feel fulfilled and finally have happiness!”
“My life would be complete if only she loved me back!”
“If I lost weight, I’d be happy.”

When I was a kid, I used to tell myself this lie every day. I felt incomplete, and different for feeling so much. I felt like my sensitive heart had a hole in it waiting to be filled. I tried filling it with religion, love, lust, friendships but these proved fleeting when the person or support system would go away.

I filled it with addictive behaviors: video games and other obsessions but mostly I just filled the holes and numbed the pain with the greatest distraction that was always around: food.

Feeling sad? Grab some ice cream. Want to celebrate? Grab pizza! Bored? Put on a movie and grab some popcorn. Angry? Get some Doritos. That’ll fix it.

I believed I was broken and missing something so I kept looking until one day I came face to face with reality and a blank tennis ball and I knew the truth for the first time:

“I didn’t need anything to be happy or healthy. I had everything I needed and the time to live the life I was born to live had come.”

I stopped looking for perfection and focused on practice. I stopped using food to bandage wounds and started really healing. I stopped blaming and pining and feeling not good enough.

I didn’t become better losing 250 pounds. I became the man I’d been the whole time.

(quote by e.e. cummings)

Socrates once said that the secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. This thought has always deeply resonated with me as it relates to weight loss and dieting. So many diets are focused on the, “what do I STOP eating or drinking?” We associate dieting with sacrifice and pain and struggle instead of focusing on the love of new things and foods.

One of the greatest parts of my weight loss is that I’ve found incredible things, foods and experiences. I ran my first race, my first triathlon. I learned Krav Maga and how to do Brazilian Jiu-jitsu in a gi and in street clothes. I sparred and jumped and climbed and experienced. I found a love unparalleled by anything I’ve ever experienced: Brussels Sprouts (I may be overstating this but I LOVE them properly prepared). I learned to Squat and Deadlift and to swim 1 mile straight without stopping.

I learned to cook but most importantly I learned to love myself. I taught my kids and friends and family how important it is to take care of yourself so you can better serve the world around you.

That’s why I have to laugh inside when someone asks me if I miss eating pizza every day. Honestly? My life is so filled with the blessings I’ve been handed after that I haven’t had time to notice the absence of pizza.

It will feel like a sacrifice when you first start but dieting, like all life change will be more successful the more you’re able to focus on all the things you’re gaining instead of consumed by the things you’re losing. You’ve got this.

An investor does not purchase an asset because of how much it is worth today. But what happens when we can’t see the prospective value? We pass.

What happens when we can’t see our own potential value?
What would change in our lives if we could?

In my life, there have been countless times when I felt hopeless and worthless, unworthy of investing in myself. Even after I started losing weight, one of my inspirations, my father passed away after a debilitating stroke. My marriage fell apart. I took the chance to love again, only to be cheated on. I’ve experienced injuries and trials beyond belief.

No one would have blamed me for giving up after any of these events. Everyone would have understood why I would have felt like I wasn’t worth the investment. Take a month off from eating healthy, let yourself go for a little while, it’s understandable.

Your worth is not diminished because someone else cannot see it. You are a miracle, made of the same matter as the universe, with the breath of life flowing through your heart and your soul.

The day you were born, you were endowed with unlimited potential: a blank check to the universe. Only, instead of money, you have the ability to write whatever you’d like on that check. Can you see your value?

What would you change if you could see your unlimited potential right now? Like all acts of faith, the best way to see your unlimited potential is to act on the belief you cannot see and watch it appear in front of your very eyes.

You are (and always have been) worth it.

#WriteThatCheck

When you weigh 440 pounds, finding clothes that fit you feels a lot like musical chairs: you’re running around the store just looking for something, anything that fits you. I have been at goal weight for nearly 6 years and the loose skin is gone but still every once in a while, I break into a cold sweat trying on clothes that don’t have the letter X in the size. I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize the guy there.

SOMETIMES I’M STILL FAT IN THE HEAD.

I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be in a truly abusive relationship, but I’ve definitely come close to being in one with myself. I withheld love and tortured my body until the day came when I said, ‘no more’ and took a walk (a stumble would be more accurate) of a mere 212 steps. I gave it everything I had and as my body began to shrink, my everything became bigger.

Half a mile, then a mile… 5 minutes on the rowing machine… 20 minutes on an elliptical. Squats to parallel and eventually lower. Benching the bar… then adding plates on plates. Finding the strength to bend over until eventually I deadlifted over 400 pounds.

But the most important thing I’ve learned to do is to love myself enough to care. When I hit goal weight, I started to research fashion a little and care enough about myself to put my best foot forward. Like my weight loss, I cared enough to become my greatest self.

I don’t love myself because I can fit into Medium Slim Fit shirts now. I fit into Medium Slim fit shirts because I learned to love myself.

And you can bet your bottom dollar that this love affair ain’t ever ending.

(Quote by Oscar Wilde)

Today I want to talk to you about regret. Regret, like all emotions about the past is at face value an unprofitable feeling: you cannot go back and change what has been done. Regret only serves us when it provokes action to inspire a brighter future.

In other words, the sooner we can:
Convert PAST REGRETS
into CURRENT HOPE
we can find FUTURE RESULTS.

I remember the first time I became mindful that I had become morbidly obese. I was driving down a dirt road when my cell phone went out of service and I was left to drive in silence. In quiet reflection, I felt my legs pushing the pedal and realized that there was a constant pressure on the top of my thighs.

My stomach was pushing them down into the car floor. Like water filling a home, it was expanding into every inch of my clothes and stretching buttons and fibers. I arrived at my destination and was so tired from driving that I couldn’t even get out. So I didn’t.

I couldn’t do my job. I couldn’t live. I believed it was too late. I felt completely powerless to change.

My dear friend and mentor @opalmaraz is always reminding me that where your attention goes, your energy flows. He’s right: when my attention was on my powerlessness, I stayed there. It wasn’t until I stopped feeling the weight of what I had become and started feeling the liberation of what I could be that I started walking down the path that led to my greatest life.

What are you regretting? How can you convert that into hope right now that produces the future you’ve always dreamt of?

For me, that hope helped me lose one pound and started until I lost one pound 225 times.

Where will you let your attention go and energy flow?

It turns out that Henry Ford was right the whole time.

A recent survey performed at Stanford found that individuals who believed they had the power to fulfill their goals were more likely to accomplish them than those who didn’t believe they could. There are a few reasons why this may be true.

Maybe you believe in the power of attraction or the universe’s ability to cosmically bring power to you based on your intention. Or perhaps you believe in the power of positive thinking to make us act as if we are able to accomplish them. Regadless of the reason, there is one practice that will make an enormous difference:

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.

You can’t believe in yourself and harbor excuses. You can’t believe in yourself and not act as if you will accomplish your goals.

I struggle because I am used to living in a credit card world. I want the prize now and to pay for it later but that’s not what achievers do. Achievers work BEFORE they receive payment. Achievers act in such a way because they have FAITH that the MIRACLE will come.

Faith is the principle of power in all intelligent beings. Do you want to control your life? Do you want to obtain results? Have faith in yourself, think you can and act as if and I think you’ll be surprised at the results. I know I was.

BELIEVE then ACT. Results will come.

The harvest comes only after you plant and pick. Transformation is waiting for you on the other side. Are you ready?

For years, I prided myself on being a perfectionist. I used to have a mantra:

“I strive for perfection because why should you aim for any less?”

For years I abused myself mentally and physically every time I’d make an error. Even the smallest mistakes represent massive failure when the only thing you’ll accept is perfect. I’ve learned that we will never find contentment, joy or satisfaction if the only thing good enough is perfection.

Perfection should never be your goal in weight loss or anything else! We only fail when it is. Love yourself to create and sustain change. When we try the other way around-changing because we think that somehow we’ll love ourselves in the end, we end up in one of two places: 1) giving up before our goal because we don’t love ourselves enough during the journey to keep going or 2) relapsing after hitting our goal because we don’t find love there immediately.

You are good enough already and you have everything you need to be successful. Take joy in progress and love the journey.

The results will come-even if they aren’t perfect.

January 1st is coming soon which means one thing: millions of people are about to Google the question I’m going to answer for you today:

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT?

If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you may or may not know that I u weight using a #Paleo diet but I do not strongly advocate Paleo. It’s not because I don’t believe that it’s an amazing way to eat (I do) or that people can lose weight using it (they can). I learned something incredibly valuable in studying the habits of weight loss professionals:

Low carb diets are incredible for weight loss. So are low fat programs. So are vegan low protein programs. And juice fasts. Also keto/mostly meat diets are great. Weight watchers works and so does shake based meal replacement and surgery and…

Picking up on the pattern yet? Like skinning a cat, there’s more than one way to shed the fat. But like choosing a pair of shoes in a store with thousands of selections, sometimes we can be paralyzed by indecision in the face of infinite decisions and so we make none.

Sometimes we will pick a program and after it doesn’t make us lose 100 pounds in the first week, we call the diet (and sometimes ourselves) broken or bad and give up. There’s an old phrase they use in Alcoholics Anonymous about the program that “it works if you do” and this is just as true as it is in your weight loss program.

In weight loss, in relationships, and in virtually every part of life, your ability to keep working in spite of setbacks and “lack of motivation” (I.e. life’s greatest excuse) will dictate your success.

Didn’t lose weight this week? Keep going.
Not at your goal weight? Keep going.
Can’t see changes in the mirror yet? Keep going.

You’ve lived your whole life the way you are now. Why not see what happens if you stuck with it?

Vegan, Keto or Paleo? Whatever you want. It all works… But only if you do.

This is a story of boy meets tennis ball.

It was November 2010 and my life was at rock bottom. My marriage was in its death throes, I was burnt out personally, professionally, spirtually and I didn’t know if I would be alive the next year and frankly I didn’t care. It was a tennis ball of all things, that I came face to face with and couldn’t handle (see my TEDx talk at TinierTim.com/TED for more on this).

This neon green symbol was something I was angry with at first, but eventually became a beacon of hope that told me the most important message an obese kid who is about to give up could hear:

“YOU CAN DO THIS.”

And so I started with baby steps, finding a way to make small changes that yielded small results. I met with personal trainers and nutritional coaches who helped me devise a plan that I was able to stick to. Most importantly, they told me something and these plans showed me the one thing that I needed to hear over and over.

“YOU CAN DO THIS.”

And so it goes. I managed to lose one pound and then another. Like Michelangelo said about the Statue of David, once I chipped away the excess, the physical TinierTim was inside the whole time. I dealt with the mental issues, seeking out the best counselors and overcoming a lifetime of learned helplessness until all that was left was the message that I share every single day when I tell my story:

“YOU CAN DO THIS.”

The BS excuses you’ve been telling yourself are kindle for the fire of your passion and dreams. Use them. Don’t have time? Focus on shorter, harder workouts. Don’t have money to eat healthy? Learn to grocery shop on a budget and save money by cutting out dessert. Slow metabolism? Start exercising and watch that metabolism take care of itself.

Once you dump all the weight and all the excuses, you’ll prove me right and join your voice with the thousands of other successful Transformation Tuesday stories screaming all over the internet today:

“YOU CAN DO THIS!”

Do you love yourself? I don’t mean this in a #feelinmaself instagram kind of way where you “love” yourself enough to post one of the 1000 selfies you took in a “good enough” kind of way.

Do you love yourself the way you love your kids, your parents, your siblings and your best friends? Imagine that you had a best friend who was allowing a romantic partner to abuse them mentally and physically to the point where they were chronically depressed and struggling to find peace in a troubled world? Would you step in and help? Of course you would.

Yet for many of us, we are in an abusive relationship like this with ourselves. Not only do we not love ourselves as much or as well as we love others, but we are harming ourselves daily with negative self talk, a low image of ourselves and practices that are not designed to be good for us.

What you are willing to accept for your life is inevitably what you will receive. So you don’t like where you’re at? Quit settling for that place. Start with a declaration (to your self, your partner, your loved ones and friends) that you deserve better followed by a burning desire to change your circumstances and with the faith that you can change.

Stop settling. Raise your standards. Then let the desire burn inside you until it burns your old world down. What will be left? A fresh start, love in your heart and a lifetime of possibilities.

You’ve got this!