Everyone who knows me well, knows that I've been battling my weight my whole life. I've never known what it's like to be thin and I've had a serious yearning to find out for as long as I remember.
The trouble is that, through out my life, I would start a diet with an event in mind. I would want to lose weight by the end of summer vacation so I could wow all my classmates with my super hot new bod. Or I'd want to lose weight by Christmas to impress my extended family. As I became older and more goal oriented, I thought that it would be nice to lose all the weight I needed to lose by New Year's Eve. Or by the start of high school or college or grad school.
I think goals are great, but the problem is that they were seldom achievable. Thinking I could be capable of losing 50 pounds in the course of three months was short of realistic. Always the planner, I would lay out the number of pounds I needed to lose per day and week to achieve my goal. However, when week one came to a close and I wasn't 4.16 pounds lighter, I felt like a failure. I would decide that I would never lose 50 pounds, so why even try, and I would fall hopelessly off the wagon.
The kicker is, that when the next event began to loom, I would always say, "If only I had stuck to my diet, I would be where I wanted to be right now."
Now as the New Year is already looming ahead of me, I'm well aware that I need to lose about 1.75 pounds per week to get below 200 pounds by the time the ball drops. Given that information, standing on the scale in my Weight Watchers meeting and finding out that I had only lost .8 pounds should have sent me into a cookie eating spiral.
However, on the walk back to my office I had a sort of epiphany. Maybe I won't be down below 200 pounds on New Year's Eve, but if I continue doing what I'm doing now, I'll certainly be closer to it than I am today and closer still by New Year's Eve 2009! I'm the one who set the goal! Who cares if I fall a little short of it as long as I don't give up!!! I've got a lot of years left to live and every healthy choice I make brings me closer to living them the way I want to--even if it takes a lot longer than I want it to.
2 comments:
I could have written this post! I have done EXACTLY the same thing so many times, I actually quit having a goal.
Good for you to have a change in thinking! That is the hardest part of this battle!
I'm with you on this new way of thinking! I wanted to lose 120 pounds in a year. I realize now that if I make 50, it will be quite an accomplishment. But I got this way over the course of many many years - why should I expect to lose it all in only one year? And each 20 pounds makes a positive difference in my life.
GREAT post!!!
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