I just finished reading the weight loss success story of Barbara Dolan who found motivation and weight loss success by joining a roller derby league.

After 2 pregnancies and weight gain that had stuck around, she had previously “accepted that she was fat, and that was that”.

Instead of staying stuck in this thought, she decided to do something about it after having a breakthrough one day.

She attained initial, moderate success with weight loss, however after having some photos taken, it was obvious that she still had a “cushy”, soft body. Joining a Pilates class helped her shape up quickly, although after 6 months, she was bored with the workouts.

When Barbara discovered that there was an, all-girl, flat-track roller derby league in her local area of Chicago, she joined immediately. She was completely wiped out by the sessions for the first few weeks, but since she enjoyed it and stayed with it long term. She ended up dropping from a size 16 to a size 6, and had additional weight loss from skating.

She decided to stop after 2 years because she was afraid of injury, but I see a great lesson in her story: it is so important to find a physical activity that you not only enjoy, but will also give you results, in order that you will stay motivated to do it.

If you don’t see results, you will lose your motivation, however even if you see results but you don’t enjoy the activity at all, you also won’t stick with it. Now I’m not saying that you will necessarily Love Every Minute of your workout, or that you won’t have to push yourself to get up and do it. I truly do enjoy working out on my treadmill, but I still have to push myself to do it. I’m always happy with myself after I’ve accomplished my workout, and the same goes for the resistance training that I do.

To sum up, the biggest benefit that I received from reading Barbara’s success story is that if you do gain some enjoyment from the workout you choose, then you will have so much more motivation to do it. Your motivation will only increase once you start seeing those results.

If instead you pick a workout that is the newest best thing and are doing it only to lose weight, but you can’t stand the workout, that is the same as losing weight because you feel you have to for an upcoming event, or because someone else wants you to. You can end up with results, but how can they last in the long run?

Read all of the details of Barbara’s full story on Prevention Magazine’s site today, and gain some motivation and inspiration for choosing your own workout. Enjoy! 🙂