Staying Motivated

99.9999% of us have trouble staying motivated to stay on track with our diet and to get to the gym during the holidays. This morning as I was on a walk to get coffee with one of my friends she told me it was the first time she had done anything active in awhile and that she just feels like a big, lazy blob right now. It IS hard to stay motivated when surrounded with holiday deliciousness and the weather is ugly - makes you just want to curl up with a big blanket in front of the fireplace with a plate of peppermint brownies. Soooooo I thought I would make a list of things that keep me motivated to stay on track:

• Knowing that I will be up on stage in very little clothing in less than 18 weeks with a zillion people staring at me under bright lights. Can anything possibly be any more motivating???? Actually I am leaning towards competing in Vancouver at the end of March also which means it is really less than 15 weeks. Ummmm yikes!!!!
• The little green thing on my wrist - just reminds me to stay on track for list item #1!
• Reading other people's amazing body transformation stories. Bodybuilding.com has a lot of good ones. 
• Surrounding myself with other people who support me, especially others with similar goals. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who still poo poo the whole competition thing but I just try to ignore those Snarky Doodle Doos (yes that group of people has a new fancy name!) 
• Wearing my muffin top pants. Oh yea, I have a pair of awesome stretchy workout pants from Lucy that I bought years ago. No matter how many inches I lose off my waist or how much my body fat decreases, these pants never fail to give me a cute little muffin top. Actually, I am wearing them right now with an awesome WaMu CAN t-shirt and some pink polka dot socks. Yes, it is laundry day. And no, I will not take a picture to post. These pants motivate me because I'm determined that someday there will be no muffin top. 
• Thinking about my next cheat meal. I have now proven to myself that I can go a significant stretch of time without a single cheat (8 weeks - holy cow!) but I do look forward to them! I discovered an amazing salad mix at Costco - Broccoli salad. I know, weird that I would LOVE broccoli salad :) This is what it looks like: 

It has broccoli/broccoli slaw, bacon pieces, walnuts, dried cranberries and this amazingly sinful dressing. The dressing packet is HUGE so I didn't even need to use all of it or it would have been swimming! This will now be a core part of my next two cheat meals (last two before April!)

• Visualizing what I will look like in April - I imagine myself looking like I could be on the cover of Oxygen magazine. Maybe not super realistic but hey, we can all dream :)
• My morning cardio followed by a strong cup of coffee (or even better my "Christmas coffee" AKA SF peppermint americano) As crazy as it may sound, I get totally energized by that 40 minute sweat session. I can't imagine NOT doing cardio first thing in the morning now - it would be like not drinking coffee! I just realized yesterday that since I started doing morning cardio, I haven't hit my snooze button at all when my alarm goes off!