No More Wishing

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Well, well, well… I believe that I’m finally ready to tackle this weight loss journey once again. It’s time. I’ve spent the last year depressed and cynical over gaining back the weight I worked so hard to lose. I no longer want to carry that burden, both figuratively and literally.

I’ve had flashes of this feeling occasionally in the past year, but something feels different this time. For one thing, I feel ready to take an holistic approach, which I know is a critical element to being successful at losing weight. It takes changing what and how much I eat, becoming more active, being accountable to someone else by weighing weekly, and finding ways to nurture myself that don’t involve food. The process can’t work for me unless all four of those elements happen, and I feel that I’m finally ready to tackle all of them.

So, here is my plan:

My first goal is to lose 5% of what I weigh today by July 1st. That means losing 10.6 pounds in 13 weeks (Ok, go ahead and do the math if you have a burning desire to know how much I weigh. I’m not telling!) This is very doable and who knows: I may even lose more. But for now, it’s enough. I’ll set another goal on July 1st.

In order to reach this goal, I need to have a strategy, which is:

1. Write down the food I eat everyday, and its Points value.

2. Exercise. I’ll start by walking three days per week and going to the gym two days per week. I’ll gradually increase this over the three-month period to walking six days per week and going to the gym three times per week. I have the time: I just haven’t made exercise a priority – until now.

3. Accountability. I’ll weigh every Tuesday night at my weight support meeting.

4. I’ll do something good for myself that feels self-nurturing at least once per week. Geeze, that feels weird to have to write it down like that! But I know that if I don’t commit myself to doing it, I’ll let other people and other tasks take priority over me. I need to make sure that I feed my spirit and my body with something besides food.

5. Finally, at the bottom of my food journal, I’m going to take time every night to write down three things for which I’m grateful. I believe that having an 'attitude of gratitude' helps keep the focus positive as we go along this weight loss journey. It’s not about diet and deprivation and struggle. It’s about choosing to get healthy. There’s a huge difference in those two ways of thinking.

It’s all about attitude and as we all know, Attitude Changes Everything!


Until next time…