Doing My Part to Motivate the Masses

I’ve never, ever been inspiration for someone else, however, with this weight loss journey, I find more and more people telling me that I’ve made them motivated to start working out and eating better. It’s kind of a trip!

My co-worker D, who is overweight, told me yesterday that her 5-year-old daughter was watching TV with her husband and a diet pill commercial came on. The daughter said, “Mommy should use that. She’s so big!” The co-worker’s husband told D about the exchange with their daughter, so D decided to ask her daughter about it. She said, “Do you think Mommy is too big? Are you embarrassed by me?” The daughter replied truthfully, as we all know kids are prone to do, with a “Yes. Sometimes you embarrass me.”

D continued to say that hearing that statement from her daughter was her “wow” moment. The moment where something flips in your brain and you know that you are going to do whatever it takes to lose the weight. She said she had done it before with the assistance of fen-phen, but fen-phen is a crazy drug that causes potentially fatal pulmonary hypertension and heart valve problems and eventually led to their withdrawal and legal damages of over $13 billion. Yeah. Not healthy. This time she’s joining Weight Watchers and is really motivated to lose the weight the right way. She said she’s seen how well I’m doing with my diet and exercise plan and I’ve inspired her to get on board with losing weight.

I told D that I know how hard it is to diet. Food isn’t fun anymore. It’s looked at something to fuel your body. The days of eating fast food and pizza and soda and sugary coffee drinks are over. I also said that I’d be willing to talk to her whenever she’s having a hard time with the diet, walk with her on our lunch hour… whatever it takes. My friends and family have been so unbelievably supportive of my weight loss that I can only hope to be supportive of another person’s journey, too.