In the spirit of getting my first blog post out of the way, I had to be able to fully accept this may be one of my worst. Knowing myself, if I waited until my writing skills were superb and I finally learned how to make compelling blog articles, this writing would never happen.

Ironically, that’s how my journey in fitness was, and also my professional career in fitness (that will be a whole other blog post)

Let me tell you how I was self sabotaging myself when it came to losing weight. It was 2004, I’ve already had my gym membership for at least 6 months. I wasn’t new here. Although, I acted like I was. I went to the huge Downtown YMCA in Winnipeg. It had everything, basketball courts, 3 floors of cardio equipment, machine & free weights, an indoor track, swimming pools, an aerobic studio and squash and racquetball.

Now even though I had a gym membership, and that meant I had all access to the whole gym, at this point I only used a stationary bike, sometimes the elliptical, the machine chest press and a few other upper body machines, and I shot hoops sometimes. THAT’S IT!

What am I getting at?

I’m saying that I had access to all this stuff, and all these other in shape people and I didn't use any of the other machines or free weights because I didn’t know what to do. I WAS AFRAID TO SCREW UP OR LOOK STUPID.

I was sabotaging my own progress, just because I was afraid to look dumb. So I stayed tucked away on my stationary bike until the timer on the bike read “20:00 minutes” and that meant I could go home.

Never actually trying, kept me in the zone where there was a GUARANTEE I would never get results. Don’t get me wrong, at least I did something, it was better than nothing. The problem was that I wasn’t even willing to try and fail. I would’ve been further ahead with my weightloss if I had been ok with trying and failing. You have permission to try and fail at stuff. You’re not supposed to be perfect. You’ll learn a whole lot along the way.

- Lester Hernandez (B. Kin)