Maybe you have spent the last six months to a year spending a lot of time at strip clubs and drinking and have lost motivation to take care of your body. Perhaps you’ve spent most of your time on the couch eating potato chips covered in rice as the main staple of your diet and smoking a lot of weed, why would you start to work out and eat right?

First I would encourage you to do a mental exercise. No matter what your situation is, extrapolate your current habits over the course of 10-30 years. If you think they may potentially result in you being a drug addict, obese, poor, or dead as the result of a heart attack, shit needs to change.

Start with the blatantly obvious, dial back your recreational drug use, honestly you should just eliminate this entirely, but do it over time so it isn’t so difficult.

Then I would like you think about something that you would like to improve about yourself. Maybe you’re a little thick around the midsection. What would make you happier, pounding all those big macs and beer or having a divinely inspired physique? Wouldn’t it be worth it alone to be comfortable in your own skin so you aren’t embarrassed to take off your shirt off or to make it so you can leave the lights on when you are with your lady friend?

When I was younger and just beginning to train and exercise one of my first goals was to be able to take off my shirt when running and not be self conscious about it. So after a few months of lifting running and eating a decent diet, I no longer mentally had these concerns. I cannot begin to explain how liberating it is to achieve these types of goals that do so much in terms of improving your confidence and mentality.

This applies to everyone as well, women, men, skinny, fat, think about all the things you should be doing to take care of yourself. They may seem boring or too hard, but once you realize the potential impact it can have on you mentally and physically, it becomes very easy to eat right and get to the gym.

It is important when thinking about diet and training to not think of it in temporary terms, almost everyone I know that fails to take care of their body will start to be “healthy” and do the right things for 1-3 months, and then it all falls apart because of one excuse or another. Looking good and being able to perform well at life is not something you should want temporarily.

So as Johnny Pain would say, make a decision to improve yourself. Because when you make a decision you divorce all possibility of an alternative outcome. Stop praying, wishing, and hoping, and start deciding.