2 faces of me.

I had a goal. 13 months, 17 days ago, I had began a program that I was praying was going to change my life. For many years, I was unhappy with my weight, and I never felt like I could successfully do anything about it. I tried to follow diets and programs but none ever lasted more that about 4 hours. For those who have ever had something in your life you just couldn't conquer, you know what it is like to have a dream in your heart but no capacity to hope for a change. That is where I was.

One day, I decided that I needed to stop eating the way I was eating or I had to just suck up the reality that my poor choices were resulting in a body that I didn't want. It came to the point where I just had to forget about hoping or justifying or planning, I simply gave up on diets and fads. I realized that I had to 'own' what I was doing to myself. Either way, I had to stop beating myself up over and over and over again for the same issues. Mostly I had to just admit that no matter how 'good' it was to go to the gym, it didn't make me feel good, and everytime I DIDN'T go I felt worse about myself.

For a year, I stopped paying attention to what I was doing, and more than that I stopped beating myself up about it. There was no majic pill, no change in circumstances, and no moment waiting just around the corner that would transform me miraculously into the size 6 supermodel I thought I wanted to be. Instead of beating myself up about it, all I did was become a student of myself-my feelings, my reactions, my interactions with the world around me. I tried very hard not to sugar coat what I was thinking and feeling.

Toward the end of that 'observation period' I realized that I was actually pretty proud of the PERSON I had become, I watched as I became thoughful, loyal friend, and a chaser of God. I found that the shape my body was in was changing my personality, and I didn't like that, but I was able to differentiate what I looked like from who I was.

In January of '07, I was watching TV and saw an ad for a weightloss program that a friend had found great success with. It just seemed RIGHT. There was an inevitability about the situation that directed me.

13 months and 17 days later I have achieved my original goal of 50 pounds lost.

As you can imagine, this has changed my life. Surprisingly though, it hasn't had the profound internal impact that I always though weight loss would. I KNOW that if I hadn't dealt with the mechanic of eating separatly from how I felt about myself, I never would have succeeded. Although there are a lot of changes in my life that have been the result of the weightloss, it hasn't actually changed much of WHO I am. I am still that same person I was before-who I was proud to be before, just now the outside is less burdensome to carry around.

So often when we are attempting to make drastic changes in our lives, we confuse the activity we are trying to change with the person that we are.

Here is a quick side-by-side to give you an idea.....