Your Excuse: "I'm Overweight and I Have No Idea How I Got This Way!"

The Excuse Buster: Can you pinpoint a specific time in your life when your health habits went off track? Think back as far as you can into your past. Did you always struggle with weight issues and unhealthy habits? Were you heavy as a child? As a teenager? As a young adult? Considering these questions is important because they usually reveal clear reasons why you veered into the land of unhealthy habits.

If you can't remember any specific time and instead remember always struggling with bad habits, look at the role models from your early life. Did they also have the same type of unhealthy habits? Did your parents have weight issues or suffer from alcoholism or drug addiction? More often than not, you will see clear patterns in your early life that directly contributed to your current struggles.

The point of this exercise is not to blame anyone - just the opposite. Being aware helps you to forgive them and yourself, wipe the slate clean, and choose a new direction. As you look back across your life, imagine that you can see clear paths running from one experience to another. Intersecting these paths are many crossroads. It was at these crossroads that you made decisions that led you to the next phase of your journey. Either you kept choosing the same type of experiences over and over again, or you occasionally chose a new direction and broke out of a destructive cycle.

Affirm and know that you can do the same thing right now. As you examine these experiences from your past, you can use the insight you've gained to make more beneficial decisions. Where do you want to go from here? What kind of future do you want to have? Do you want to be healthy, strong and energetic? Which actions would help create such a future? Through this exercise, you will be able to see a clear connection between your past choices and your current life situation, as well as your current choices and the future you are creating for yourself.