My Head. My Heart. My Habits. + A JenX Journey Status Update!

October 2014:  Weight – 260 lbs. / JenX Journey begins with Dr. Christy @ Live Light Clinic in Zionsville, Indiana. 70 lbs in 18 months! 

2016-2017:  Maintained weight loss (huge for me, never done before!)  I plateau and gain/lose the same 10 lbs. During this time.  Ran my first 5k.

February 2016:  Start CrossFit (thanks CrossFit 180 in Lebanon!)  I now train with Elavus CrossFit in Crawfordsville.  Went down one clothing size.

October 2017:  Step up of training at Elavus and begin Stronger U Nutrition, personalized online nutrition program. http://www.strongeru.com  Beginning weight with Stronger U and Elavus CrossFit – 198.6.

January 2018:  Started the JenX Journey blog as a New Years resolution to hold myself accountable to my goals of reaching 100 lbs lost and a pull up!  Also to reflect on how I finally changed my life after being obese for almost 20 years.

March 11, 2018 (day of post):  Weight – 166.4  Completed Workout 18.3 in the CrossFit Open https://games.crossfit.com/

I AM NOW 6.4 POUNDS AWAY FROM 100 LBS!!  Blog post below…

Jen doing a 35# Overhead Squat in the CrossFit Open Workout 18.3 on May 11, 2018.

Head.  Hearts.  Habits.

I was someone who read every diet book.  I mean ALL of them.  I remember not long before I embarked on this journey purging every diet book I had.  They all let me down.  It was boxes and boxes of diet books.  I had had it with all the empty advice.  I finally got rid of them at some point when Mike (the hubs) was away on business because I was so embarrassed as to how many books I had accumulated with ZERO lasting results to speak of.

And guess what? All those diets work if you do them. 

Its the ACT of doing them that we all suck at.

I could lose 30-40 pounds like it was my job.  It always came back.

What I needed was someone who could help me get my head, my heart and my habits in the game.  This is a realization my Stronger U Nutrition family helped me crystallize today.

If I look at my 260 lb self vs my 167 lb self (my weight as of my writing of this) almost everything about my life is different.  And I mean, everything (however, I am still married to the same man thank goodness!)  But I changed jobs, moved to the country to live in our family lake house, my youngest graduated from high school, I started CrossFit.  While most of this seems unrelated to health, I did use all the change to my advantage to build a new life with a new attitude for myself.

My kids were off to college and jobs.  I always used them as my excuse and they were anything but.  If anything they tried to encourage me to be healthy when they were home.  But it was time to finally face myself and I was the only one in my way.

I now see all that change in relation to my success is not by accident.  However, you do not have to turn your life upside down like I did, but I will say even if everything else stays the same – you DO have to change what’s in your HEAD, what’s in your HEART and your HABITS.

1)  My head:  This time, my head had to be in the game.  I couldn’t be in la la land that I’d do this for a spell and then go back to my pizza and drive thru loving ways.  I had to get in contact with my rational self.  My intelligent self.  I’m a consultant and I teach people every day that success comes with planning and strategy.  I had to have that for myself.  And nothing that any book was going to tell me – what was I going to do about it?  I got my head in the game and made the commitment to give it everything I had and I was going to be willing to think differently about almost everything I thought I knew. Change begets change.

2)  My heart:  Losing weight in it of itself wasn’t enough in my past attempts.  And neither is change for the sake of change.  I had to channel something I deeply wanted.  Something more than the couch and endless boxes of pizza.  What else did I want??  To run a 5k.  To be outdoors and in nature every day no matter how warm or cold it was.  I wanted to age well so that I could hike vigorous mountains (because I think the most beautiful places are places you can’t visit by car).  I wanted to learn to ski.  Most importantly, however, I needed to trust myself – just one more time.  I needed to be able to count on myself now more than ever.  I had let myself down so many times – my faith in myself had waned.  I had to find ME.  I wasn’t going to give up.  I was in there somewhere.

3) My habits:  And then somehow, the strategy and planning has to translate in to every day behavior.  This is the hardest part I think because the little things add up to the big things.  No going home to sit in front of the TV after sitting in front of the computer all day.  Days had to be different if I wanted a different outcome.  I needed accountability, I needed direction, I needed a community that was trying to figure this out as much as I was.  I think that’s why I ultimately tried CrossFit – it was intimidating and I think I kind of needed something that was bigger than me.  A problem bigger than all the over analyzing and negative self talk that I had going on.  Something that was pushing me.  A community of support and accountability.  CrossFit delivered that and more.  From those connections, I found the same type of support on the nutrition side with Stronger U, too!

All my adult life I longed to have someone who understood who could help me. I had a lot of lonely years where I was embarrassed and thought everyone was judging me.  Today, I count my blessings every day that I have finally found my path and am on the way to ME again. 

This stuff is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and it takes wicked commitment – to the point you might not even recognize yourself.  And, not in a bad way, but in a way where you can shock and surprise yourself with the things you do that you never thought possible.

And that, my friends, makes my HEART burst!

For more info about my journey thus far visit http://www.jenpendleton.com or go directly to my full blog at http://www.thejenxjourney.com. I’m also on Facebook and Insta – @jenxjourney