Your excuses are valid. You’re not imagining your reality. You’re not imagining that you started out poor, fat, or uneducated. That’s all real. You can choose to live with the negative emotions, brought on by the excuses, that come along with the situation, but what happens when the next day comes and you haven’t moved an inch out of the mindset created by the excuses? You continue with the same line of thinking, which produces the same negative emotions, leading to the same results. The situation you find yourself in isn’t negotiable, what you do is. If your life has dedicated so much time and energy to a feeling that isn’t getting you to where you want to be, then you have to decide whether you’re more attached to the excuse than the progress. 

Who do you need to be? You need to be a person that starts to think and act different, so that you can start to feel different and see a path forward. Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet, is quoted as saying, “the path won’t appear until you start walking.” There are no right answers, but there is a wrong one, which is giving too much credence to your excuses and allowing them to dissuade you from changing your life.