Inspiring Circles

Today a friend and colleague reached a big weight loss milestone.  Andrea Griffith Cash the Editor of Chapel Hill and Durham Magazines set out to lose thirty pounds before her thirtieth birthday.  First I have to step back and say, gosh, she’s only 30, and is a great editor.  Now back to the story.  In the spring I was having lunch with Andrea and she told me that she was inspired by my weight loss challenge and wanted to do something for herself.

Being a busy editor, especially of two magazines that cover a lot of food stories is not the easiest life to keep weight off, let alone lose it.  I told her that the one big thing that helped me was making my challenge to lose weight public.  It is much harder to break your diet if everyone you know is watching you.  It also is much harder for people to sabotage you if everyone else is watching them try and push food on you.

Andrea went full on public with her goal by blogging about it in the Chapel Hill Magazine website- www.chapelhillmagazine.com/blogs/.  Thanks to her hard work and vigilance she reached her goal before her September 5 birthday- Right On baby.  It wasn’t all easy.  In August we met for lunch and Andrea told me she was stuck on a plateau.  Having visited many flat places myself I encouraged her to try a few tricks to kick her butt back into losing mode and she did it.

Today I went for a walk with a new friend who also was interested in how I lost weight.  I told her a little about my plan, but I was mostly thankful that she would walk with me because I need to move more to get myself off my current plateau.

Both Andrea and my new friend are helping to inspire me to push harder.  I may have motivated them at one point and now their work is coming back around to help me.  I am sure from reading the comments about Andrea’s success that she is encouraging others to their own success and so the circles of inspiration continue.

Whatever you may want to try and accomplish there is probably someone out in the world who has succeeded at it.  Look for their story.  Learn from them.  Take that spark to energize you.  You don’t actually have to meet them or know them.  When you have some success help someone else and in that passing of the encouragement torch you will help yourself.