I am pretty used to letting myself down in one particular area of my life – losing weight. It annoys me to no end how many years I wasted on trying to lose weight, thinking constantly about my food choices, and still always coming to the same result – no change or short lived change.
This January I decided to try a different tact since my try and drop 20 Lbs fast plan had failed for pretty much the last 10 years. First, I forgave myself for the past failures – I really think this forgiveness was a key factor this time. I stopped beating myself up and realized that berating myself in my head was not helping anyone – none of my personalities could benefit from thatJ. I also accepted that it would take time – I couldn’t get hung up on trying to make a huge change in a single month, that had always set me up to fail and I wasn’t going down that road again – I just refused. I joined Weight Watchers, not because I didn’t know how to do it on my own but because I felt I needed an arsenal of tools and support and I knew that was a major component to WW. I also surrounded myself with friends doing WW and recruited more at work!
So this time it worked – I managed to lose 38 Lbs since January 7th! But now what? I still feel kind of surreal about the whole thing, I can’t believe that the race season I have been working toward for six months is here – this one is different than any other. It isn’t my first season, but it is my first with such high expectations of me – my first with serious goals for faster times and longer distances. It is also different because I have been so emotionally invested in it while losing the weight – this season was my goal and losing weight was my golden ticket to an incredible year. No expectations there huh? Now I have to reconcile the reasonable fact that I am faster because there is less of me to push around the course, with realistic doable goals.
There are two things I know for sure:
1.) I do not under any circumstances want to go back where I was in January…EVER
2.) I know there is a high probability that I will do just that – it is unfortunately a proven fact that most people gain their weight back and I have done that several times
So bottom line, I am happy, very happy and I feel better than I have in a very long time, and I want to stay here. My first objective is to respect where I am today and not think about how much I would still like to lose, this in the past has been my Achilles heal I think. If you don’t truly respect where you are, you are doomed to go back where you started eventually, I really believe that. My second objective is to stay happy in my moments when I think “wow look how easily my legs cross” or “did those jeans really fit me, they are a size smaller than I expected would fit” but not to get caught up in them and forget there is still much work to be done. While I need to feel happy I don’t think I can get complacent or I will start feeling invincible again and stop tracking my food, and guess what that means…Teresa starts gaining again.
So it is with some trepidation that I accept the wonderful compliments and enjoy buying new clothes because I am more acutely aware then ever of how quickly it can all vanish…again!
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