I have been overweight for a long time now.  I have about 50 pounds to lose and not just so I look nice in my jeans, but because it is negatively impacting my health.  I am pre-diabetic  and if I don’t get my weight and my eating habits under control I am going to have to start taking insulin.  Additionally, my children are copying my bad habits.  Three of my five children are also overweight and not just a little bit.  So through my unwillingness to change I have perpetuated a problem that unless I can undo it may carry on for generations.  You remember those seven life areas that we talked about earlier – they are all intra-related.  If one or more areas is out of whack it is having an effect on the others.

Anyhow, I started a new program to try to drop the weight.  I will share with you the basics of what I am doing, but I won’t share the program until I see that it is working for me.  I had to go through a mini physical in order to be able to start with them – blood work, EKG, health history etc.  Then they put me on this machine that told me exactly how fat I was.  No really – the readout says that I have 90.01 lbs of fat mass.  It also said how many calories I was eating per day in order to maintain my current weight.  I was certain that was wrong, but it made me start paying attention to what was going into my mouth and looking at those calorie counts.  Guess what – it was right on.  I had no idea.

Today, they gave me the dreaded diet.  As I was reading the instructions and going over the food items with the staff, I was certain that they were trying to starve me thin, BUT I made lunch using the guidelines and I’m full.  That was almost 2 hours ago and I am STILL full.  I will check in from time to time and let you know how I am progressing with this reinvention process.

What weight loss plans have you used that have worked for you?

Maybe you are here with me.  I am so tired I can’t pay attention.  I go to bed tired and I wake up tired.  I know that has to do with my nutrition and my physical fitness.  In order to write quality stuff that someone might want to read, I have to be able to focus and that just isn’t happening.  Once again we go back to that list of areas that we need to look at and we can see that they affect each other.  I am having difficulty learning the skills and  doing what I have chosen to make a career of because of my physical condition.   It is time for me to reinvent myself  in this area.

Are you struggling here too?  If not, what are you using that works?

If this is overwhelming you or you are just not certain where your strengths or aptitudes lie; there are many tools available to help you.  Just type “aptitude test” into our Google search and you will see hundreds of results for you to choose from.  An option that I have used before is the ‘48 Days Personality Profile‘.  I was astonished after taking it at how accurate the test was in describing my personality and identifying career options for me.  Dan Miller, creator of “48 Days to the Work You Love” also has an excellent free e-newsletter available for people changing jobs, exploring their vocation or starting their own business.  I have subscribed to it for years and am always amazed at the fresh and interesting material that he creates.

If you find yourself in this place, then just move ahead slowly.  Do not make any sudden or rash decisions in the heat of the moment.   In the majority of cases you can prepare for whatever you are changing to while still working for your current employer.  It gives you a built- in safety net.  You may have to put in a lot more hours, but hours spent reinventing yourself and building your dream don’t really feel a whole lot like work.

• Career – What do you want to do?
• Financial – How much money is enough and how do you get it?
• Physical – Appearance, weight management, fitness, overall health
• Personal Development – What do you want to learn?
• Family – Are your relationships with your family members what you want them to be?
• Social – Do you have at least one or two good friends that you could call for help?
• Spiritual -Are you walking with your creator?

Which one or at the most two are you going to focus on?  As importantly which ones are dependent upon the others?  Your financial situation may be dependent upon your career – for instance if you are out of work you cannot really improve your finances without a source of income.  Maybe you have work that you really enjoy and are trying to force yourself into a career change to something that brings in more money because your finances are a mess.  It isn’t really that you want or need a new job, it is just that you have not begun managing your money well and as a result are under constant financial pressure.  Is your health or physical condition limiting you?  How about your relationships with family, friends and God?  Which pieces of the puzzle are out of place?

Sometimes this requires you to step back and take a look at what is really causing the problems in your life.  Once you pick one or two areas here, then we need to define what it is that we want to change.  Right now I am working on two areas; career and fitness.  I will occasionally post about what I am doing, but most of it will be under the My Reinvention Journey tab.  So feel free to check up on me and if you catch me backsliding – call me on it.

Reinvention is a process and often not knowing where you want to go or what you want to do leads to impatience and poor decisions.  We charge off in a direction, that may or may not meet our needs or desires, just to be moving forward.  At the beginning I encourage you to slow down and take the time to put a quality plan in place.  KNOW where you want to be, don’t just know that you don’t want to be where you are now.  If you watch a building under construction, it seems like it takes a really long time for the walls to start going up and then almost overnight it is finished.  What takes the most time is laying in the foundation.  Just like a building you have to put the base or foundation in place in order to have the ability to support and sustain the dream.  So if this first part seems to be taking a longer than it should, let it.  It is the most important part.

Drop me a note and tell me how you are doing?  Or better yet, what you have decided to do.