Hello Steemit, It's me again.

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I'm glad my first #introduceyourself post didn't put you off from continuing with this story. I'll be the first to admit it's fairly sad. Please do not fret however, it's about to get a lot better.

To start, let me just quickly touch on where I had left off in my previous post. I was in a hole, and a deep one at that. I had large amounts of debt and overdue bills, living in a house I couldn't afford, with a truck that didn't work. I was frustrated with my job, my house was in shambles, and had a fragmented relationship with my daughter, who I needed to figure out how to get to school, and who I could have watch her when I was at work. This on top of my low self esteem, crippling depression, and an insatiable desire to completely give up that was consuming every fiber of my existence. It was was then it became perfectly clear what needed to be done.

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I Needed To Fight Back.

Giving up wasn't an option, and neither was failure. My daughter was depending on me, and letting her down or failing her would destroy me in ways I no longer like to think about.

So What Did I Do?

To put it simply... A LOT.

I started bettering myself. Drastically. Bettering every possible part of my myself and my life, and I started doing it quickly, because I didn't have much time until it would be an unwinnable fight, no matter how hard I fought back.

Let me break it down in better detail in the order of which changes I started to make. I'll come back to each of these in better detail with future posts, so if anything specific interests you, follow me or let me know in the comments what you'd like posted about in more detail. #shamelessplug

My Mind and Attitude

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As I had mentioned in my previous post, I was my own worst enemy. My own mind was the biggest thing standing in my way. It was constantly telling me I was worthless, that I was a failure, that I wouldn't succeed at anything, that there was no point even trying. For a long time I had been listening, and my own consciousness was keeping me from achieving anything, It was a constant internal argument that I was having with myself. Upon coming to this realization, I knew what I needed to start telling myself, and the clarity was intoxicating.

Just. Fucking. Do It.

My mind would tell me "You can't do that"

and I would respond "Fuck you yes I can!"

"You wont finish that"

"Fuck you yes I will!"

"You aren't good enough"

"Fuck you yes I am!"

Turns out, I was Right.

I could do it. I did finish. I was good enough.

I was standing up to my own insecurities and doubts, and it felt amazing to be proving myself wrong. I started believing in myself, and was moving forward. Not walking forward, not crawling.....full on sprinting.

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My Body, and what I was doing with it.

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Three months ago, I wasn't in shape at all, and I'll be the first to admit it. I was around 15-18 kilos overweight, lazy, and would get winded walking up a set of stairs. My average day would normally consist of 8 hours sitting at a desk in front of a computer, followed by another 5-7 hours of sitting on the couch with my face in a laptop screen or television. I wasn't eating right, I wasn't cooking, I was doing nothing to better myself in any way. Because of my depression and stress, I had zero motivation and was using the internet as a way check out from reality and life itself. I couldn't cope with all of the stresses that life had been shoveling on top of me for the last three years, and was trying to shut them out and ignore them, not realizing that it was only making my situation worse.

This Was Now Unacceptable.

Once I was able to recognize this, I got to work. I had several issues facing me right from the get go. I couldn't go to the gym or leave my house to go running, the only time I didn't have my daughter was when she was at school and I at work. I didn't own and weights or fitness equipment, so I had no tools to assist in getting myself stronger,

I'd have to improvise.

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The only thing I had to use to get stronger was the weight itself I no longer wanted to carry. I would use my own body as my weights, so I started to learn how. I knew little of body resistance training and calisthenics, so I started to commit a large amount of my time to learning about it, at the same time I started implementing what I had already known.

I started slowly, but never got discouraged. I had uncontainable motivation and a drive in me that I had never experienced before. First, it was push ups, and when I got down and started, I could barely muster out 15 push ups. The first day I started doing them, I did 50 thought the course of the day. The next day, it was 17, and I did another 50 throughout the day. The following day, I was back down to 15, sore, but pushed myself to get 65 pushups in.

This is how it went. Everyday I'd do push ups, and every day I would be able to do more than the last. I wasn't stopping, no matter how sore or how tired I was, and after 3 weeks I was pushing out 45 push ups in a single attempt.

It Was Working.

I could both feel and see I was getting stronger. I looked better, felt better, and had more energy for more push ups. I was getting in around 200-250 push ups a day, and I was getting addicted. Push ups were not longer enough. I started to mix it up, and add other movements into my workout. Incline/decline pushups, diamond pushups, wide push ups, sit ups, leg raises, mountain climbers, planks, Russian twists. I kept pushing myself and changing up what I was doing so my body no longer knew what I would be throwing at it. I could see the changes I was making to myself in the mirror and it was driving me to work harder.

So I started running. I bought a chin up bar to mount in my door frame, and started like I had with pushups. The first time I ran my daughter joined me on her scooter, and it was fun, even if after only a block or two I was already getting winded. She did pull-ups with me, even if I could only manage to do one before having to rest. I had seen what I could accomplish with pushups and knew I could apply it to running and chin ups. Two blocks became four, then six. One pull-up became three, then five, then seven. I was not only increasing my max reps, but by including my daughter in what I was doing we started connecting on a level which I had not thought was possible.

There's alot more, and I'm excited to continue telling it. I'll be continuing Part three with this break down, starting with My body again, but about what I was putting into it.

Talk to you again soon;

Stay Strong, and if you aren't strong, then GET STRONG.

(The only one stopping you is yourself)