So you wanna be in shape, yeah? The best shape of your life?

You want to be lean and sculpted, to feel and look like a fitness queen. You want to fit effortlessly into the skinniest of skinny jeans, wear dresses and skirts as short and as tight as you like or just know that you could.

You want people to notice you.

You want to notice yourself.

Not because you’re vain or because you believe you ‘have’ to look a certain way.

But because you want the way you look to reflect the way you would ultimately love to see yourself.

As a woman who nourishes her body from the inside out. Who loves herself and is in love with herself. Who pushes herself to be the best she can be but does so in such a way that she is joyful. Happy. And free.

And yet –

And yet you say all of this, you long for it, but how often do you workout? I mean really workout? I’m not talking about how much time you put in, that’s not really the biggest factor. You don’t have to take a lot of time on exercise. But how much of you do you put in?

How often do you give it your all?

But also –

How often do you actually listen when your body needs a rest, when you’ve been overtraining again and again and again despite the fact that your results are going backward if anything?

Let’s talk food.

You want to eat clean yet you can’t or won’t (won’t, as everything in life is a choice) consistently make the time to prepare healthy food for at home as well as for when you’re out and about.

I know –

You’re busy.

Work gets in the way.

Life gets in the way.

You do the best you can.

No –

Let’s get real beautiful. You simply don’t put it as a higher priority than those things that distract you and successfully demand your attention.

This is not something I’m judging you for. You have the right to make your own choices.

All I ask is that you consider whether you are making the right choices. Not for me or for anybody else, but for you.

Speaking of which –

Where’s your head at?

Do you take the time to program your mind for a positive day each morning? Do you journal to get your ‘stuff’ out? Do you train yourself to believe in and actively move toward being the you who you want to be?

Or are you lucky to have time to press ‘like’ on a positive affirmation on Facebook before moving back to a running mantra of how hard life is or how undisciplined you are or why you can’t seem to just be consistent.

And when you do take a bit longer to think about what you really want, about why you want to look that way, do you truly stop to think about it and figure out what’s perhaps holding you back?

Let me guess.

You’d rather just push through another hurried workout, shove down a clean meal so you can feel like you’re doing something.

Ignore the fact that if you don’t deal with your mindset stuff that clean meal you just ate will likely be swept up in the guilt of bingeing on chocolate or the equivalent sometime later today.

Let me tell you about what it will take for you to create the body you want.

A body you feel happy and proud and sexy within. Not necessarily just because of how it looks, but because of how it feels. How you feel within it.

Creating that body?

It takes time.

Patience.

It’s like a plant which must be watered. Not just when you have time or motivation. But daily. In one way or another, you simply must water that plant daily.

Or you simply must accept that you won’t get the result you want.

The workouts that you occasionally do that you just know charge your metabolism, the days when you are organised and eat well and feel so proud of yourself, the times when you manage to grasp a few minutes to really feel the why behind your desire to be that girl?

Just imagine how much more of those transformative moments you could create if you actually invested in your goal day in and day out.

If you did so regardless of whether you had the time.

Or the motivation.

Or the discipline.

If you –

• made it a habit, something you didn’t even question, to eat well day in and day out. To enjoy treat meals when you wanted to actually enjoy them rather than to emotionally eat in a frenzy of guilt and self-loathing.

• spent daily time reading positive stuff about body image and achieving goals and creating the life you wanted.

• bothered to journal or at least think about what that brought up for you.

Just imagine who you could become as a woman if you were willing to improve upon where you’re already at.

If you were willing to let go of some of the things you cling to in desperation. The idea that you have to do ‘x’ amount or ‘x’ type of exercise to get results. That you can’t ever eat carbs. That you must always do this or that, avoid this other thing religiously. You cling to all of this stuff despite the fact that it’s not working for you.

Just imagine if the battle you fought was one in which every day you automatically and effortlessly treated your body as one you already loved. And in doing so treated your goal of changing it as one that actually mattered to you as a high priority – one that you wanted to enjoy the getting of as well as the outcome of.

Let’s get real. What are you scared of?

What do you think will happen if you truly commit? If you start putting in not just daily time to do what you say you want to do, but an hour per day? Two? What could become your reality if you acted as though you already were that girl, and invested perhaps 4 or 5 hours each day in being so?

Or the whole day?

I’m not talking about spending all that time on exercise or food prep! I’m talking about acting as though you are already that girl in everything you do. Yes, the way you move and eat. But mostly, the way you think. Talk. Act.

The way you choose to just be.

Perhaps, you’d feel like it was less of a back and forth battle.

Perhaps, you’d find yourself automatically preparing healthy foods each night for the next day. Regardless of the time.

Perhaps, you’d know when to GO and you really would GO with your workouts but you’d also know when to stop.

Perhaps you’d journal. Figure out your sh*t. Get past your fears.

Perhaps, beautiful, you’d finally create the body you want because you’d be doing it for the first time by figuring out the you who you want to be.

And perhaps, one day, when you very much did expect it because you knew you’d been putting in the effort, you’d wake up and realise that you were living your dream.

Confident.

Proud of yourself.

Full of joy.

Feeling free.

And with your best ever body the reflection of all that is inside of you.

But because you don’t do this, because you haven’t yet done it, I can only assume you either don’t really want it, or you’re scared.

I don’t think it’s the former.

I think, you have some sort of idea that you can’t really

achieve what you long for, what you say you want more

than anything in the world.

I think, there’s a part of you that believes that even if you put all of that effort in you wouldn’t really get there.

No.

Scratch that.

As a matter of fact, I don’t believe for a second that you truly think you wouldn’t get there if you consistently day in and day out did what it took.

I think you believe whole-heartedly that if you did what it takes you’d see yourself transform into the you who you long to be.

So, beautiful, the question that remains is still the same –

Why don’t you do it?

Perhaps you’re scared of how others would judge you?

Consider you too big for your boots, too self-confident when you don’t deserve to be? Too ‘full of yourself’.

Is that it?

If it is, let me tell you – nobody really cares about you in the way that you care about you. So who would you rather live for, yourself or the (probably misguided) perception you have of how others see you?

But maybe that’s not it.

Maybe it’s that you don’t know where to start. It seems insurmountable, this task of becoming that kind of woman, someone who effortlessly walks around in a beautiful body. And it seems like the type of thing that would require a lot of ongoing work as well.

And maybe you’re not sure of the next step. Or the one after that. You’re worried you’ll stumble. Make a fool of yourself.

Or that you’ll realise you’re not as good as you thought you were or think you could be. So in some ways it’s easier – safer – not to try; not to have to be faced with that.

But I ask you –

Would you rather a life of regret or would you rather try and try and try again until you reach your goal and if when you don’t get there you don’t quite like what you see perhaps then try some more until it works? Until it’s in alignment.

Until your heart sings with joy every morning that you get to wake up and be this person.

Well?

Which would you rather?

But perhaps these points also, are not quite what hold you back. Perhaps it’s not the fear that it ‘wouldn’t work anyway’, or that people will judge you or even mock you, or that you don’t know where to start or the task is too big.

Perhaps your fear is the greatest of all.

That you don’t deserve to have a life that good.

That you must pay penance in some way for things you’ve done, or simply for not being that kind of girl. For not being the kind of women who achieves success like this.

That you are, when all is said and done, just not good enough.

And if this is your fear, if this is what holds you back and stops you from striving in all your earnestness for your dreams, then let me tell you.

I understand.

I understand the fear of being ‘found out’.

Of having your bluff called as people see you for what

you really are.

I understand the underlying sense that you must pay your dues, that a life that wonderful would be too good to be true and so therefore is something you seem to resist no matter how hard you try not to.

I understand what it’s like to sabotage yourself, again and again and again.

To walk away when you’re this close.

To f*ck it all up even when you do get there.

To pretend that you’re okay with how things are when really you know you could be so much better. So much more consistent with doing what it takes to make you feel amazing about yourself. And so proud. So happy. Joyful. And free.

Because that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it?

Your dream to change your body is a dream that is in many ways unique to you; at least in terms of exactly how you see it playing out.

But in other ways it’s exactly the same as what we all want.

To know that we’ve given our all – but our all – to something that matters to us deeply and truly.

To know that we’ve done so despite the fact that others don’t see it as super important or else will tell you ‘but you’re already doing so well’.

To be not just good or even great, but to be the best. Your best.

When will you be ready beautiful?

The chances of you just waking up one morning and feeling ready to suddenly just press play on your dream life are minimal.

It hasn’t happened yet, so unless some sort of major life trauma causes a brutal wake-up call it’s unlikely that it will just happen for you in any day to come.

You don’t have to wait for an epipheny to know that it’s the right time to live your dreams.

There is no right time, except to say this –

Assuming, of course, that you want it as badly as you say you do, then there is in fact exactly the right time, and it’s now. This very moment.

Now is the time to commit.

But to do so – perhaps for the first time – wholeheartedly.

Not because it would be cool to be super hot and lean.

Not because other people would think more of you.

But because you would think more of you.

And most of all, because you have such a deep and burning desire to be that girl, that you will never forgive yourself if you don’t give it everything – but everything – that you’ve got.

And when you commit? When you say right now in your head that YES this is your time then this time you will follow through, won’t you?

Not in the half-hearted manner of someone who is scared to really accelerate towards their dreams.

But in the manner of someone who confidently knows she is already there.

So you wanna be in shape, yeah? The best shape of your life?

You want to be lean and sculpted, to feel and look like a fitness queen. You want to fit effortlessly into the skinniest of skinny jeans, wear dresses and skirts as short and as tight as you like or just know that you could.

You want people to notice you.

You want to notice yourself.

Then you better start acting like you mean it beautiful.

Time is a-ticking.

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