Failure

This word has been rattling around in my head for a couple of days so I decided to share my thoughts on it as it relates to my journey.  While out to lunch with a friend recently the topic of failure came up.  I can't remember exactly how we began disucssing our trying to loose weight and the feeling of failure.  My friend, as best I can remember, said that by eating out as many times as she had made her efforts feel like a failure.  That word can carry a much heavier burden than it should.  So being the analytical person that I am I turned to Webster to help me understand and maybe explain where I am going with this.

Webster defines failure as the lack of success.  So just because you don't succeed you are a failure?  Is there no grey area?  What were you trying to succeed at?  Maybe that is where we should start instead.  Were you trying to be perfect?  Because if that is where you set your bar then of course you are going to fail.  Were you trying to only eat out one time that week and didn't stay within your goal?  However, maybe when eating out you chose very good options and in that way you turned it into a success.  I could go on and on with a thousand example, but I think that I am making my point.  We can look at the bad of every situation and see the failure in it or we can look at the good and see where we succeeded,  it is all in how we have our mind's set.  Life happens every day all around us.  We have to learn how to take what is there and mold it into our personal success.

During our conversation I told my friend that there has never been a person who did not have a bad day when they were trying to change the way that they are eating or exercising.  The way you measure your success is the fact that you get up the next day and try again.  We are going to have our days when we totally blow it and may even binge, but if you get up that next day and get back in the saddle and return to what you know is the best and healthiest for you then you truly succeed.   

As I have said before, this journey will take me the rest of my life and will for anyone who has ever had a weight problem.  You can't lose the weight and miraculously never have to think about what you eat again.  There will be other days down the road when we will be spending it with friends and family like I did on Saturday with my friend where we can so quickly and easily lose focus and enjoy too much of something.  Or there will be days when we just don't feel like doing our part and eating healthy.  That too is ok and we have to be able to give ourselves permission to do so without punishment.  We have the rest of our lives to get this right.  One day out of the thousands of days of our lives in my eyes does not constitute a failure.  Any time that we are moving forward and taking an active role in our health is a day with success and not a lack thereof.

The word failure has been in use since 1643, at least that is the year that Webster says it was first used.  If I had to guess there have probably been women using the word in regards to their weight loss continually since then.  Our journey getting every single pound off is difficult enough without adding another negative word to our vocabulary to hinder our journey.  Every day that you get up and try to make it a better day is a success and there is no way that is the definition of failure.

Stay strong and remember to Trust Your Journey.

Being attacked or is it me?

I woke up this morning feeling pretty good.  The weather was cool outside, my kitty was asleep by my head purring and the birds were chirping.  I roll out of bed and hobble (my heel spurs are still hurting me) to the bath room and hop on the scale.  I will stop right there for a moment since I know what some of you are thinking...you shouldn't weigh yourself every day.  I wasn't weighing myself every day for a while and had plateaued and thought let me see how my body fluctuates daily to see what is going on.  So I started weighing each morning to see what the difference was.  Back to my morning, I get on the scale and realize I have lost .2 over the last 6 days.  .2!  That is what my watch weighs.  I know this because I actually took my watch off one week to weigh in when I had not made it to a goal and needed an additional .2 to make it.  What is going on with me?  Why am I not losing weight?

For any of you who have ever tried to lose weight you understand the feelings that coursed through me at that exact moment.  I went from sadness to anger to fear to unbelief all in a matter of seconds.  The thought actually crossed my mind that maybe my body will never allow me to be thin.  I have never been thin in my life and maybe I never will be.  Why am I watching every morsel that enters my body when my weight loss does not reflect my efforts?  What am I doing?  And more importantly, what am I doing wrong?

I get in the shower almost in tears but maintain control because I will not allow myself to go to that place.  I have been there and it is not a pretty place to visit, and I definitely will not go back there to live.  I have to keep a positive attitude but have not figured out how yet.

Then I turn to the one and only thing I know to do.  I start to pray while I am in the shower.  I pray that God will give me the strength to hold it together today.  Just one day.  I have no idea what tomorrow brings, just please let me hold it together today.  This leads me to what some of you might think is crazy but I truly believe is possible.  God allows Satan to test and attack us.  God only allows him the ability to "play" with us to the point that He knows we can take.  Is God allowing Satan to attack me with my weight loss to see if I will continue to turn to Him and rely on His strength?  Is He allowing Satan to test me?  If so, he will not win.  It is not fun and I am more than a little frustrated and I am whipped today but I am holding on by my fingernails and will not let go.  He can continue to test and attack and I will continue to journal and eat what I should to make my body healthy.  Eventually my body has to start losing again.  At least I have my trust in God that it does.  I pray that I can one day be thin and healthy if I stay true to this plan and continue to eat correctly.

With that said, what if it is just me?  Maybe I am doing something wrong.  I journal my food and stay within my points.  I walk when my foot doesn't hurt.  But maybe I am not doing enough.  There are others who stay within their points and continue to drop weight every week.  They weigh less than me and the weight comes off.  You hear of people losing a 100 pounds in a year or more on WW.  At this rate, I will be lucky to lose 50 pounds this year.  I don't eat everything I want or the portions I want and the weight hangs on.  What am I doing wrong?  Why am I not succeeding at this?  I am proud of my 30 pounds, but losing almost nothing in a month when I am truly trying is wearing on me.  What am I not doing?  What should I be doing different?

Just Move On

I was forwarded something recently that I have kept on my desk so that I can read it every day.  It is as follows:

Just move on.

Stop dwelling, stop missing the days when you ate with reckless abandon, stop lamenting a second bowl of ice cream, stop begrudging the present moment, and move forward with your life.  Eating, though it seems like the most important thing in the world, is not.  Food, though one of the purest forms of pleasure and fun and reward, is just sustenance.  Think about your relationships and goals and other parts of your life that bring you satisfaction.  If you focus on the food, the food will take over your life and you will miss out on so much more.  Life is more than a great meal plan.  Think about what could happen if you shifted all your energy from food onto other parts of your life.

I can't tell you how much this short paragraph helped me this first few months along this journey.  Food has been my friend, my companion, my go to for everything in the past.  I am from the south and as I mentioned in a prior post, we use food to express our feelings here.  But this statement made me stop and take a second look at where I was placing food in my life.  I was placing food on a higher level in life than even myself.  And that I can tell you is not healthy in more ways than one. 

Take a minute and think about how you view food.  Where does food fit into your life?  Are you happy with your relationship with it?  I know I wasn't.  I let food take over my life and drive me to a existance of unhappiness and pain that I wasn't sure about how to get out of.  Now that I have put food where it belongs I am much happier and I know my knees are beginning to thank me for it.  I sit here now and wonder how I ever got to where I once was in my love affair with oreos and pizza.  Food doesn't have feelings and can't truly comfort me like my friends can.  Food doesn't heal my broken heart like the love of my family loved ones will.  So why was I putting it in the places that these people should have been filling?  I don't know and am not certain I will ever truly have the answer to that question.  I just know that I am not going back there God willing.

I wish I could have realized this 20 years ago, but God has His timing for a reason and I can't question that.  I am learning these lessons today and I will continue to grow and hopefully continue to understand who I am and how to continue on this journey to a healtier me both inside and out.

Still Trusting My Journey

Helping a friend of mine get her blog up and running today reminded me that I have not paid any attention to mine in a very long time.  I set the blog up to follow my weight loss journey.  The journey is still moving while the blog stalled out.  I plan to make every effort to correct that.

After a little over 3 months and 30 pounds gone, I am still traveling down this road.  I would like to say that it is my willpower and ability to control my surroundings that have gotten me here, but it is not.  God and my friends have gotten me here.  I have learned during this journey that I don't have any willpower and I am not in control of anything.

A few months back I found a bracelet in a catalog that had three letters on it TYJ, which stands for Trust Your Journey.  I bought one for me and one for my best friend who has recently embarked on a life changing journey that God is leading her on as well.  I have worn that bracelet every day up until the Saturday night prior to Easter Sunday.  Trust Your Journey has been my mantra and still is.  These journeys that we are on are journeys that God is leading us on.  That bracelet has been my anchor for months.  When I thought I could not make it through the day I would look at that bracelet and it would give me the little boost that I needed.  Last Saturday night I was going to our Saturday night Easter service which is a huge production.  I was getting off the bus to go to the arena where it takes place and my bracelet got caught on the door handle of the bus and broke.  At first I was a upset.  This is the bracelet that has kept me grounded.  What was I going to do when I needed that something to let me know I could make it through whatever was bothering me?  But during the service and listening to Pastor Allen speak of Jesus dying on the cross in a way that was not only horrific but really beyond my comprehension and in a way that no human should have to die.  And he did it for me.  It dawned on me, I don't need that bracelet.  I pray every morning for the strength to make it through today, and every night I thank God for the strength he gave me and pray He will give it to me tomorrow.  This is what I truly feel has gotten me through this 3 months and has allowed me to continue on this journey where all others have failed.  Why do I need a bracelet?  He is everywhere around me.  He is in the trees, lake and ducks I see on my walk every day.  He is in the encouragement me and my WW buddy give to one another at work and at night by text message.  He is in the words I get from my friend as we spend way too much time on the phone talking about everything and nothing (yes we are still 14 at heart).  I don't need that object to remind me of all of these things or that I am worth enough to take care of the body He gave me.

My life has changed in so many ways since the beginning of the year and this journey.  Ways that I did not realize would happen when I first started my weight loss journey.  The things that I did not realize were already changing in me are far too numerous to count.  Hopefully I will have the courage to put them all down in writing to hopefully help me put words to them so that I never go back to where I was.  I was at a very broken and unhappy place from which I am slowly being delivered.  And if putting my journey out there for others to read as some of my friends have been doing during their weight loss and other journeys and one person is touched by something I say then spilling my pain and growth from that pain is worth it. 

And may my next post not be so long in coming.  May God bless me and my friends and continue to lead us to the place He has prepared for us.

Default Position

This has been an interesting month for me to say the least, but a bit scary as well. I joined Weight Watchers and that became my focus for the first 3 or 4 weeks. But shortly things began to change in me. I was and am seeing changes that, to be honest, I have never seen or felt before. Food has slowly moved from my focus without me really realizing it. I decided before I joined that I had to make this change and it had to be something that was going to change for the rest of my life. I know that sounds kind of cliché but it is true. I have said it a hundred times but this time I meant it. I have said in previous entries that I began to pray at night and in the morning for the strength to make it through that day. I am still doing that. But even through it all and feeling different I was afraid to say out loud how I really felt. I was afraid that if I put words to it that it would go away. That I would somehow jinx it by saying out loud that for the first time in my life chocolate did not have a magnetic sway over me or that cookies did not call to me from the cookie isle. I feared my mere words would undo what I was grasping for and craving to maintain on the inside. This morning I stepped on the scale and it said that I have lost 15.6 pounds. No idea what the WW scale will say and don't really care. And as I was stepping into the shower I realized that it was time that I claimed this journey. This is my journey. God is delivering me from this addiction and this is mine! I need to realize that I can rejoice in what is being given to me and not be afraid of saying it out loud for fear of it being taken away. For whatever reason, right now, right here it is my time to let go of the food. To accept that life is more important. Friends are more important. Health is more important. God is showing me that and gave me the peace to claim that for myself this morning. For years I have heard people use that term "claim it" and never understood what they meant by that, but this morning I did. I am not pumping my chest out as if I have done anything spectaculor on my own or that I am more deserving that anyone else. But for whatever reason, it is my time and He is allowing me this time to learn this lesson right now. I was listening to a preacher from the church I attended Sunday talk about their bible reading. They are reading teh bible in a year. In my effort to thank God for what He is giving me I thought I would listen and make the effort to read with them. I went back and wrote something he said word for word because it was so powerful and I felt it spoke directly to me and is the title of this entry. My food has been my default position but it will not be any longer, and for that I thank God. I don't want my fear of change or my unwillingness to claim what He wants for me to ever limit me again. The following is what he said: When you are under press what is your default position? Where do you want to go back to? If it is anything other than a greater trust in God it limits your future. Ask the Holy Spiritto help you rewrite the default position of your life. It will change the potential of your life.

Yes I will have some of that, thank you.

I went to lunch with a friend yesterday which opened my eyes a little.  Before going we had the normal volley of email asking "where do you want to go?"  "I don't know, where do you want to go?"  "Where can we go now that you are on a diet?"  Hit the brakes sister, what did you say?  Now that I am on a diet?  I just let it pass and realized she still didn't get it even though we had been talking about her joining Weight Watchers as well. We decide on Wendy's.  Cool, I can work with that.  I look up the website and figure out how many points everything is and get my game plan together.  Luckily fries are not my weak point and I can pass them up.  I would rather have a baked potato any day but even that I can forego.  Grilled chicken sandwich light on the honey mustard, 9 points; side salad, 0 points; pomegranate vinaigrett 1 point (I only used half the pack).  My whole lunch for 10 points I can do this with my eyes closed.  I was making sure that I saved my points for dinner since I was already planning on having pizza with my husband. 

We sit down to eat.  I put my dressing on my salad and she assembles her apple, chicken, pecan salad.  I give her props, she did buy a salad in an effort to eat better.  But what most people don't realize is that restaurant salads are often just as bad for you as any other meal.  Her salad by the time she got done with it had almost as many points as a burger and fries.  I am sure that her arteries fared better because of it, but her wasteline probably did not.  But, the effort was there. 

My point to the post is the statement that followed.  She stated that I was so dedicated and doing so well on my "diet".  I could tell that she is still seeing this as something you do for a short time to get some weight off and then you return to your old ways.  I told her that no, this is what I have to do from now on.  I am eating exactly what I want when I want it but staying within healthy guidlines.  I am eating lighter at lunch because I have it planned to have pizza for dinner.  If I want to spend the majority of my points on lasagna at lunch then I will do that and eat grilled fish and a salad for dinner.  If I want to splurge and have a hot fudge sundae then I will and adjust some where else.  I am a food addict and I am obese and these are the facts of who I am that I have to work with.  My past eating habits got me here.  I have to change that and I am doing so.  I will have to eat this way the rest of my life not just for a while.  It will probably take me 2 to 3 years to realistically get my weight off, but I am ok with that.  As long as I am continuing to get healthier and that number continues to creep down then all is good.

It is funny that I find it hard to believe that she can't see the reality that I can see so clearly, but then I realize that before now I was her.  I can't count the number of times I started a "diet" only to go back off of it within weeks.  I never, before now, decided to change my lifestyle.  For whatever reason, I am thankful that it has clicked in my brain and I pray every day that God will give me the strength that day to remain on this path and headed toward my goal.

Hearing and Listening...are they the same?

I have been talking with a friend of mine about hearing a listening and whether or not they are the same.  I say that they are not.  If you have ever been married you would agree.  I guess if you have kids you would agree as well.  When it comes to my weight loss and the process by which I have to keep my mind, body and soul in check to continue down that road, it takes me to listen to do so.  I find myself, even today, hearing but not listening.  I lost 1.2 pounds at my weigh-in today and I was disappointed at first.  How many times have I said to others that as long as that scale is  moving down it is a good thing.  But then I get on the scale and since it does not reflect the 2.4 that my scale did this morning I am disappointed.  I am in no way listening to myself at all.  I can encourage others all day long and truly mean it when saying it to them, but don't listen to myself.  I hear what the leader at our meetings say, but am I listening?  I even hear my body telling me that it feels better, but am I listening?  Think about this.  Not just in weight loss but in many aspects of life.  Are you listening or just hearing.  Chances are you are just hearing.  Today I have stopped and listened to the silence around me and allowed myself to listen and try to take in what my body and those around me are saying.  Yes, I feel better.  Yes, I have done a wonderful job eating better and getting 13.2 pounds of fat off my body that otherwise would still be riding around on my knees.  Yes, I am doing the right thing in changing my way of eating for life because without it I don't know how many years I will be given.  Yes, my husband is benefiting from our changed eating habits.  And most of all, yes, my friends are right that I don't ever need to be down on myself if the numbers on a piece of metal don't relfect a number that I think it should.  I will do my best to always listen instead of simply hearing no matter how hard that task is.  And I pray that my friends and family have patience with me as I try to retrain my brain to do so.