blacKandi Fitness

And I had no idea it motivated a lot of people. I do get a lot of Spark Mail from people who ask me how I lost the weight so fast or how I lost the weight period or what do I eat or how do I work out or what books do I have or what DVDs I work from and on and on and on…so, what I did was I started putting that type of information on my SparkPeople page because I found a lot of the questions to be the same and I was giving the same answers. A lot of questions are unique, but I wanted to address a lot of the common ones on the page.

I didn’t start getting lots of Spark Mail until after I wrote up and posted “The Secrets of My Success Revealed“. I’ll tell you how I got the idea to even write it. It came from the heart and I made no outside references until I updated it later (the what to eat part). Sorry in advance for the huge run-on sentence that’s coming up NOW! Anyway, I read a lot of fitness and dieting forums everyday because I love dieting and fitness and health now (totally addicted) and I see a lot of people who start on the road to good health and stick to it long term, I see those who get on the road and wander off, but get back on, I see those who start on the road and after not planning or researching and thinking they are supposed to get drastic and positive results tomorrow when they started today…those are the ones I had to get at. I was like that in the past too.

It took me one day to look in the mirror and look at my medical cocktail for me to straighten up. It took me twelve years to change. I wasted twelve years of good health which could have been twelve years added onto my life expectancy, but I’m glad I’ve straighten up now so it’s not so bad. Yes, my life can be ended in a freak accident tomorrow and if not, I’ll could end up in my 40s suffering from a stroke or a heart attack or even worse diabetes! I am really scared of Diabetes. My daughter’s dad has it and was diagnosed with it at the age of 16 and I’ve cried for him so much within the past four years. He’s finally took charge of his life and he now eats healthy and works out. When I decided to change my life on July 12, 2008, he decided to do so too! I’d like to give him his props because he looks good, feels good and he told me he’s never turning back. That’s the type of attitude I like.

It takes willpower people. Yes, you will fall sometimes and I do as well but I catch the problem right away and I do so by keeping track of everything I do. Tracking my money? Well that’s a different story! LOL! But I track the hay out of my dieting and fitness programs. I keep two binders, one where I keep records of my fitness (it’s a mess, but I can read it) and one where I keep records of my dieting (the parts I highlight in yellow means I did BAD – eek!). I’m faithful at recording because it keeps me focused and on track. If you can’t see it or touch it…most likely you will forget about it. When I record my information it makes me think about what I did wrong and what I should do next time to remedy the problems. I do the same with fitness. For fitness, I MUST workout in order to have something to record…the more blank pages that means I’m not burning enough calories or fat (I keep photos of my inspiration in my binders). This will make me gain weight or go into a plateau…I record my weight every single morning after I relieve myself. I don’t weigh myself every week because that’s too long to go for me to look back at my records to try to pinpoint what went wrong. Here is the food log sheet I used for the first twenty-four weeks of my dieting and here is the new one I just started using this past Monday because I can jot down my fitness minutes on it as well.

And I also want to share with you all the thing that started it all for me…Peggy! She’s my Weight Watchers digital scale. She’s the first scale I’ve ever owned. I can’t live without her. I think I’ll die if she disappears (she did once, but that’s a long story I may tell one day on here – she was safe).

Lastly, I just wanted to say that I’m happy to have received that bullseye, sometime yesterday, on December 31, 2008. A lot of Sparkers have motivated me and still motivate me to continue on. I’m also happy that I was able to inspire a few at the same time. THANK YOU MY FELLOW SPARKERS!!!! What a beautiful beginning to a new year!!! Let’s set goals and make them come true in 2009. I’m with you!