Day 21: Hold it close to your heart

I'm not sure if it's contagious, and we're all catching it from reading each other's blogs, but something seems amiss. I even caught a bit of it myself.<br /><br />What is "it"? Our lack of enthusiasm for losing weight. Several of the blogs I read are written by people who have been at this for a long time, the same as me. Actually, it's not that we lack the enthusiasm for losing weight, but we lack the enthusiasm for doing the things we have to do to lose weight.<br /><br />It's like we're all tired. Tired of the mundane, of the boredom. The measuring, the counting, the tracking. The decisions about what's the best choice, what's the most healthy thing to eat. The worry. The remorse when we screw it up. The self-flagellation when we don't get it right.<br /><br />I'm right there with you. I'm tired of it all too.<br /><br />On the other hand, I vividly remember what it was like to weigh 240 pounds. I can flip over to my pictures page and look at myself. I remember the humiliation, the hurt, the physical pain. I remember the asthma attacks which have completely disappeared. And mostly, I remember never wanting to go anywhere or do anything.<br /><br />That 240-pound woman would have rather died than attend a Pi<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">nk</span> concert and danced in the aisles. She couldn't have hiked ten minutes up a mountain, much less for three hours with a 25-pound pack on her back. She would never have gone to a football game and talked to strangers and high-<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">fived</span> them when her team made a touchdown.<br /><br />No, that woman would have sat at home, probably on the couch, and watched TV all weekend. Or maybe read a book. Socializing was not her thing. Then she would have whined about her "boring" life.<br /><br />All this weight loss stuff is rather boring, the same old thing day after day. Especially when you're past the honeymoon phase. The pounds aren't falling off quickly (if at all), the compliments about how great you look aren't as frequent. Buying new clothes has lost it's charm.<br /><br />What can keep you going? What's really going to motivate you to continue with this? Is where you are now "good enough"? If you were running a 5k and saw the finish line up ahead, would you just say, hey, I ran 4.5k, and I just don't feel like running the rest of it"? Right, I didn't think so.<br /><br />We each have to find the one thing that's important to us. The thing that makes us want to continue down this road. It's not exciting stuff that we're doing. It's pretty boring. But life isn't boring. Life is fun and exciting and thrilling. There's so much life to live, to live it overweight is a waste. We miss so much when we're overweight. We hide, we avoid situations, we avoid people. Being overweight is it's own prison.<br /><br />So even though I intended to write about what motivates me to stay with this, I realized what works for me is probably not going to work for you. We each have to find our own way. Just look inside yourself, find the real reason you're doing this and hold it close to your heart.

Day 21: Hold it close to your heart

I'm not sure if it's contagious, and we're all catching it from reading each other's blogs, but something seems amiss. I eve...

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