When someone is successful with a physical transformation, or more importantly, committing to a healthy lifestyle, one question he/she gets a lot is “How did you do it?”

I was thinking about this, and I’m wondering if what they really mean is “Why did you do it?” The how can be kind of obvious: she stopped eating Taco Bell and started taking CrossFit classes. But the why? No one would know that by watching her social media.

There will be no shortage of how questions:

• How will I find time to get to the gym?
• How will I afford healthier food?
• How will I lose 20 pounds?
• How will I take it to the next level?
• How am I going to finish that 5K?
• How am I going to cook clean recipes for just me?

But the biggest step in a healthy lifestyle is not the HOW, it’s the WHY.  If you skip it, you’re most likely going to fail. It can’t be a shallow, surface why either: fitting into the jeans you wore in high school, wearing a certain dress to the next big event, saying you’re under 150 pounds, etc. Your why needs to be raw and emotional. In other words, a why that makes you cry:

• You want to be able to chase your son around the yard
• You want to love yourself again
• You don’t want to be another person in the family that dies from an obesity-related illness
• You want to reverse your blood sugar or cholesterol numbers
• You don’t want your husband to take his eyes off of you again
• You want to inspire others to make their life healthier as well

A shallow why is not going to get your butt out of bed at 5 in the morning! It needs to be a deep and powerful reason why you’re pushing through every single day when it gets hard.

After your why, you can find your how. Finding your how is the easy part.

Building a permanent lifestyle is like building a new house. You build the foundation first, then the frame. You have to have something to put your walls on! You can come up with a million answers to the HOW questions, but if you don’t have a WHY as your foundation, they won’t have anything to stand on. The why should always come first and be the first thing you remind yourself of every time you question why you’re doing this.

I am challenging you to journal a little bit. It can be a random sticky note, your bullet journal, your daily planner, or the bar napkin under that beer of yours. The point is I want you to write something down with pen and paper to make it stick! Tell the universe WHY you want to make a change in your life. Tell the world ALL the “why’s,” and then display that piece of paper somewhere you can see it every single day!