Follow Mike on IG: https://www.instagram.com/yearofgettinghealthy/ Mike's Question Responses: Describe your weight loss journey.: Long time in the making. First planned to do the year of getting healthy project in 2016; but due to huge pile of excuses I didn’t actually make a serious run until 2020. I started Feb 15, 2020 and while everyone else was sitting around getting fatter in quarantine I actually lost 40 pounds- then in the fall when it become apparent Covid and the restrictions were coming back I fell back to my bad habits and gained it, and some extra weight back. I then decide 2022 was going to be my year- I woke up early Jan 1 and went back to bed, I didn’t do anything that first day but sit around feeling sorry for myself. Then Jan 2 I actually did start and never looked back. I did learn from previous attempts that I needed to ease into things. So I started out that first day I think just doing like 10 mins of cardio and shrinking my portion sizes. From there I kept incrementally ratcheting it up and over the course of the year I hit a low of about 72 pounds down. What’s a skill you developed as a result of working through your weight loss process?: I would say discipline. Going on a weight loss journey gives you a ton of opportunities to exercise your discipline skills; and it’s crazy to go into it thinking you’re going to win everyone of these inner discipline chats you have with yourself… but each win you do have makes you a little stronger, and each failure gives you an opportunity to reflect and learn. What has that skill led to outside of weight loss?: I find it’s applicable to practically everything in life. Discipline for me truly is the holy grail of skills, and sadly a lot of people see discipline more as a trait, but there’s more than enough examples out there to show that it is a skill, and it can be learned and strengthened overtime with practice… and just like all other skills, it you don’t use it for a while it can become weaker to. What advice would you give to someone working through their weight loss journey?: You’re going to screw up, and as long as you intentionally try to learn something from each one than you turn into an interesting part of your success story rather than the final chapter of your failure story. What's something most people don't know about you that has nothing to do with weight loss?: That’s a great question; and one I struggle to answer to be honest. I’ve been a very open book and shared a ton on my Instagram, much more than just weight loss. If any listeners do have any questions though I’d love to hear from them. I’m not selling coaching or anything like a lot of these weight loss accounts are; and there’s nothing wrong with that, just not something I’m interested in at the moment- but if anyone does any questions like I said shoot me a dm and I’m happy to chat when I can. Please share this episode with anyone you think would be interested in listening to it. Visit yourlevelfitness.com/podcast for links to the show page on each of the major podcast directories. From there, you can subscribe, share and review this pod. For comments, questions, topic ideas, possible collaborations or to be a guest please email daryl@yourlevelfitness.com