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s to get on our body all of a sudden needs to come off of our body in 30, 60 or 90 days, and don’t let me start with the idea that people forget that their body is going to transition, that there’s gonna be quote, unquote “awkward stages of their body”, that all of a sudden if you go from having a very taut middle because it’s … For me, as an example, my skin was very, very tight because my middle was very, very large, but when I started losing size in my middle, things got gushier and mushier and jiggled when I walked, and I had to realize, and I did realize, “Oh my gosh, this is what progress looks like.”

That I’m not going to go from a middle that’s round and more cake-like … I’m not speaking negatively about myself, I’m just giving you a visual. More cake-like, to all of a sudden six pack abs, tight skin, like I’m seeing in the pictures. It’s a picture. It’s a moment in time. That’s it. It doesn’t show you the journey in between, what this really looks like, and because we’re fed this idea that this journey is supposed to be filled with perfection, and that we should fit that mold as well, when we don’t, we quit, because people aren’t telling you … well, Coach Tulin is, but people aren’t telling you about what that journey looks like in between. What it looks like from day one, and really there’s no last day, because … I have this thing that I say that I love. I’m not a before, I’m not an after, I’m forever a work in progress. I am, because where I am in my journey right now and what I’m doing is gonna look vastly different the next couple years.

It could be from a place of improvement or it could be from a place of a comeback from a setback. It could be that all of a sudden I’ve gotten to a certain place in my fitness, and now I decide that I wanna start running marathons or become a body builder or professional pole fitness instructor. I don’t know. I don’t know what I wanna do two years from now, but I don’t know what it is that I want to look like. I don’t know what that’s gonna feel like, so I’m forever on this journey that I just love who I am so deeply, and I respect and honor my past experiences so much, that I wouldn’t be here today right now if I hadn’t gone through the failures of my past and the struggles of my past, but the thing that I refuse to do is to work out, eat right, perfectly, fail, repeat, because here’s the deal. Here’s what happens.

Don’t we love the prep? We got the prep material, and we’re ready to go, and Monday’s coming, we’ve gone grocery shopping, you might have gotten rid of all the quote, unquote “junk food” out of your house, and on Monday, like cold turkey, on Monday you’re gonna go from your previous life, how you used to do things, to eating perfectly, eating the exact foods, working out perfectly, you’re gonna wake up a certain time, and then you come back from work at 6PM, your head is shoved into the freezer, you’re eating the frozen food. You don’t even care if it’s cooked anymore. Now you think you suck, and now you think you screwed up. “Well, you know what? Now that I’ve screwed up, I’m just gonna go ahead and have a great time and eat whatever I want between now and I’ll start again next Monday,” and then it happens again, and then the next Monday, and then it happens again, and it’s the next Monday, and then we wonder why the scale goes up. It’s because we go in with this idea of perfectionism.

What if you went in and said, “I’m gonna focus on moving my body first, and I’m gonna focus on working at my ability and challenging at. I am going to work out for 10 minutes and see how I feel,” and this is what I say. I crank up my BS meter, I recalibrate it, and then I run it through it. Can I really not go any longer, or am I really done? Can I go another round? Can I do another exercise? Can I walk another minute? Can I add another minute to this? Can I take this 10 minutes, 12 minutes? Hey, I got to 12 minutes. Can I go to 15 minutes? Well, I don’t wanna overdo it. Listen. It is difficult to overdo it at this stage. It is again a number, it is a limit, it is a goal, but if you hit that goal, and you can surpass it, why not? Or let’s look the other way. What if you go to move your body, but you set a 10 minute goal, and you’re only able to go five minutes, three minutes. That’s my story. Three minutes.

You go three minutes, and you’re like, “I’ve gone for three minutes, I’m huffing and puffing, I feel like I’m gonna vomit, I didn’t hit the 10 minute mark, but you know what? I did three minutes, because a week ago, I did nada minutes. I didn’t do anything. I did zero minutes. I hadn’t even tried this, but today I did three.” The next day I come back from … I go from three to five. That is almost doubling the time I’ve put in in moving my body. You guys remember, at this point I’m about 375 pounds, with absolutely no cardio ability to even walk up one set of stairs, 12 steps, with having a rest in between. Now I’m at the point of moving my body from three minutes to five minutes, and all of a sudden, now instead of taking a break on those 12 steps up to our apartment, I now can make it to the top, and then take a break before I walk across a little landing to the front of our door.

Five minutes the next day turns into eight minutes, and you know what? It may have taken me eight days to get to the 10 minute mark, but I got to that 10 minute mark, and I was doing so much better, I got to 12 minutes instead. I blew past my goal. It took me longer than I expect. I remained flexible, and I just celebrated the crap out of the progress that I was making. Something funny happened. I started focusing on moving my body. The next thing I knew, when I started eating certain things, like the McDonald’s, and the Chinese food, and the Coca-Cola, and the three Häagen-Dazs bars, and that was one meal, like literally nearly one meal, all of a sudden, when I was eating those things, I didn’t like the way I felt, and I started reaching naturally for healthier alternatives without realizing I was, because my body was looking for something, and because I was getting some self-awareness, I listened to it, and I went and had the apple. I went and had the apples over the french fries.

Listen, as many times as I went through the McDonald’s drive-through, and they offered me the option of apples or french fries, I never asked for the apples, ever, ever, ever, but now I want apples with almond butter on top. That is a huge difference. I didn’t deprive myself, I didn’t remove how I was eating, I simply began adding in traditionally nutritious foods, just started adding them in, and as I started adding them in, I started finding that some of those foods that didn’t serve me in the way, that I didn’t like the way they made me feel, began to fall away. Did it take me longer? Yeah, but I lost a hundred pounds and eight dress sizes. I’ve maintained 85 pounds and six dress sizes off my body for five years. I’m pretty freaking proud of that.

When does my journey end? Never. When do I stop celebrating? Never. I’m constantly evolving. I’m constantly growing, and whenever I make a commitment, the universe tests my commitment to my commitment. Just because I set a goal, it doesn’t mean the world is going to stop and it’s going to allow me to be able to move towards that goal without anything getting in the way. Not possible. That leads back to work out, eat right, fail, repeat. How do you pick yourself back up from the struggle? How do you pick yourself back up and keep moving forward? It comes with consistency and persistence over time. It comes with practice, but the only way you can practice it is if you’re willing to screw up. If you’re willing to see value in failure. If you’re willing to look at failure as datasets, to be able to move forward, now that you have that data, so you can apply it, so the next time this comes up, you know how you’re gonna handle it. You know how you’re gonna do things differently.

It sounds like a lot, but it started with just moving my body at my ability and challenging it. One thing. That made more progress for me over time, that allowed me to maintain my results, okay. I’m giving you some quantitative results. If I try to explain the weight loss between my years and try to put that and attach that to a number, there are not enough commas and zeros and anything to represent that quote, unquote “weight loss” between my years. I’ve had greater success and taught other people to have greater success in this by starting with one. One thing. One thing that isn’t attached to any number or any goal, except to focus on health gains and to celebrate yourself. That’s it. We’re gonna continue being fed this idea that we have to work out perfectly, eat right perfectly, and that’s gonna get results.

Now, let’s be honest. There is science behind strong nutrition and proper workouts. There’s strong science behind that. We cannot deny the fact that eating healthy helps us live a healthy life. There is variations of what that means, I’m just using it generally, but you have to work to get there. You have to evolve to get there, and the way that you do that is by practicing, and getting better, and building teeny, tiny layer by teeny, tiny layer at a time, and you would be amazed at how quickly those layers add up. They’re little bits of progress that add up to big change over time. I will take that and I will teach that any day over quick results in 30 days, quick weight loss in 30 days, to only gain it all back in a different way, in different spots, and more weight than you’d originally lost any day.

Thank you for joining me today with Fit Has No Size. I have so many thing to talk to you about. Make sure that you follow me at Coach Tulin on YouTube, on Facebook and Pinterest, and to follow me on Instagram @iamtulin, I-A-M-T-U-L-I-N.