I started my weight loss journey as a lone ranger. I’m not the type of person to ask for help, and I’m working on that. After a year of steady weight loss, I plateaued and became frustrated.

Fortunately, I found Venus Index and was able to understand true fat and weight loss principles geared for women, adapt them into my life, and change my lifestyle.

Along with the lifestyle change came a lot of things, positive and negative changes, but a happier healthier me.

The most important thing I came to understand was a newfound responsibility to help, as I know how hard it is to ask.

People came to me with questions, wanting and needing help and advice on how to conquer their own weight loss battles, and I began to grasp the privilege I had earned; to help and give back all that I had gained.

Where do you start?

My journey, lead me to the expansive fitness industry that is no longer just within a gym’s walls. You can find health and fitness information everywhere, but without a basic understanding of where to start it is overwhelming, contradicting, and confusing.

There are a million products, programs, gimmicks, work-from-home fitness companies, eating styles, eating plans, personal trainers, supplements, equipment, apparel and on, and on, and on.

So where do you start?

The basic principles in which we are taught through Venus Index, excess intake will lead to excess fat. Period. Monitor and balance your intake and outputs. Have a deficit to your surplus and you will lose the excess.

What about the food and the middle ground?

Since really delving into the industry over the   last few months, I see a lot of people who say they want to help others which is an amazing thing, but what I really see are pretty pictures and motivational quotes, offers for quick fixes, gimmick products, crash diets, and money pits.

The ones that bother me the most are the fitness models eating a vat of ice cream, or a dozen doughnuts, with quotes, “I promote eating” or “I love junk food.” I see these images and wonder what am I doing wrong?

I work HARD and I can’t eat junk everyday. If I did I’d be bloated, feel terrible, gain weight, and lose all my hard work.

Don’t get me wrong, I love ice cream and I have said on multiple occasions that I don’t eliminate things from my diet that I love.

However, what I DO say that they DON’T is that I budget for that ice cream. I plan for it. I allow for it.

There is no way I could maintain my results eating ice cream alone. There is no way I would be anywhere near healthy eating ice cream alone.

To me, these images imply “look at me, I’m so awesome that I can eat whatever I want and still be smoking hot” and they just continue to taint the industry, confuse and impede consumers.

It continues to turn away people who are interested in being healthy and fit; leaving them feeling as if they have done something wrong that they too, can’t eat ice cream every day and rock Miss Olympia.

Then we have the other extreme, the epidemic of obesity that is plaguing a generation of instant gratification with a sense of entitlement. A generation that doesn’t know how to engage will power, self-determination, self-control, and drive to make choices to change their lives.

I know, because I lived it. I was too self-involved “enjoying” my 20s and engaging in ridiculous unhealthy behaviors ignoring responsibilities, not only to myself, but also to my future.

There were many times I consumed more calories in junk food and alcohol than in any sort of nutrition and wondered why I was over weight. Then I decided I’d join the movement of acceptance and just be “fat and happy” except I WASN’T happy.

Finding the middle ground between “fat and happy” and “I’m so awesome I can eat all the things and still be smoking hot” has been hard.

Let’s lead together

This lifestyle is doable, this lifestyle is maintainable, but it isn’t without sacrifice. It isn’t without self-control, self-discipline, determination, and drive.

You have to want to be better.

You have to want to change.

Once you make that determination find the will power to keep going.

Turn to like-minded people, turn to people who want to not only encourage you, but also engage in your success.

Thankfully, there are people who do truly want to and do help, often for free.

Let us help you, and then pay it forward.

Lets change this industry.

Lets impact society.

Let us regain ideals of health and fitness.

Lets promote life long habits that will allow our children to grow in the world we envisioned for them.

Lets show them how to take ownership, how to cook, how to work, how to use their body, and minds for good.

Lets do this together and promote a world of moderation with an ethic for hard work and success, not just acceptance.

Lets BE healthy and fit.

Lets BE the example in which we want them to follow.

Lets lead together

– Erin