Changess

One of the major parts of the journey to a healthy weight is to change your habits. If you are overweight and out of shape, clearly the habits you have aren't working for you. So those habits have to be changed.

When I began this journey many, many moons ago, I knew lots of things about my life had to change. I also knew that it wouldn't be easy and it would take time. I set out first to change my activity. As a child I was incredibly active and I felt that would be the easiest to change significantly. I was right. It took me time but I've really gotten to the point where I prefer to be active than inactive. Given some time to kill I would prefer to do something even if it's just clean something or go for a short walk. I'm still not as active as I'd like to be, but I work to be as active as I can.

I also knew I had to change my food. What I ate. How much I ate. When I ate. All of it needed to be overhauled. I knew I couldn't change it all at once and fell on my face a number of times when I tried to change too many things at once. But gradually over time I changed things. I started on how much I ate. This is where the points system at WW helped so much. Cutting my portion sizes helped a lot. Then I went on a campaign to change what I ate. I worked on dropping processed foods and eating only whole, natural foods. That made a huge difference and really helped a lot. This is where the Core program from WW helped me a lot.

But in spite of all these changes I was making it was still a struggle. I would struggle to get up in the mornings and workout. I would wrestle with making the right food choices. The demon of junk food would grab me and not let me go. It was hard. Really hard. I kept at it but wasn't sure I would ever win the battle. It made it a lot harder when I would hear or read of people who would say they changed something and made it sound like it was so easy and simple. 'I started working out more' and poof I lost 800 lbs. Well, I started working out more but I struggled with it every single day. It wasn't just a change I made, it was a battle I fought and had to keep fighting. Many, many times I felt like I was a huge failure because I couldn't make a change stick immediately.

Then something happened. I don't know exactly when or how, but it happened. I suddenly started picking healthy food over junk food without really thinking about it. I found myself getting out of bed before I was awake enough to realize what I was doing :) I found myself being the person and doing the things that I always wanted to do, easily. I wish I could pinpoint exactly when the change occurred but there is no one point. There are a thousand little battles that were fought along the way. Some were won, some were lost, but all were incredibly important.

I realized this only yesterday. I went to WW and after missing for 2 weeks was afraid what the scale would say. I was down 4 lbs. I hadn't done a whole lot of tracking during those 2 weeks. I just ate when I was hungry and didn't eat when I wasn't. I worked out every possible chance, though there were mornings it just wasn't in the cards. I had started grad school and the nights I was in school till 8:30 I didn't eat dinner. Not as a conscious choice, but because I would eat a little bit bigger lunch and not be hungry at night. My one hard and fast rule was, if I wasn't hungry I didn't eat. When I was hungry I craved healthy foods. I never once considered stopping at a fast food place when hungry. I didn't eat much junk at all. I wanted good, healthy, whole food and that's what I sought out. Even if I was hungry and needed to wait a little while to get something healthy. That's what I wanted and it was worth the wait.

So, while I was busy fighting all those little battles the changes happened. I'm not a failure at all. In fact, I'm willing to bet I'll be more successful in the long run then those who made the changes quickly. I battled my demons along the way and while they are not all slayed, I have complete confidence I can slay the rest.