Are You Ready?

The daffodils are in bloom, trees are budding and the grass is greening up in Michigan - all signs that winter is finally over :-). Since this IS Michigan, it certainly doesn't mean that we won't see anymore snow this season, because Michigan is famous for April snow storms. But, as my husband likes to say, time is on our side and warm weather will soon settle in for a while.

Warmer weather is often a time when people start to panic, as the reality hits them that swimsuit season is just around the corner and they aren't ready. For those of us who live in states with long, cold winters, warmer weather means we haul up all of the spring and summer clothes we packed away last fall and start putting away the heaviest of our sweaters and wool clothes. The problem is that about this time of year, people try on some of last year's summer things and find out that they're too tight.

That's the situation I found myself in for years. I ate my way through the cold, gray days of a Michigan winter, then went on the latest crash diet to get back into my spring and summer clothes. There was never a thought of changing my lifestyle permanently - the thought was just to get back into my clothes. Because I was always more active in the spring and summer, and because I was more inclined to eat light in the summer (grilled meats and salads), I weighed less in the summer and was usually a size smaller in the summer than I was in the winter. As soon as colder weather returned, the carb loading and sedentary lifestyle returned, along with extra pounds and a larger size. It's amazing to me now that I actually accepted the fact that I was a size larger in the winter than I was in the summer.

That diet mentality and all of the yo-yoing finally caught up with me and I found that the weight didn't come off one spring. Then fall came and I gained more weight, then didn't lose it the following spring. The yo-yo dieting finally resulted in an ongoing upward spiral of weight gain that brought me to my all-time high of 268. Yep, I dieted my way all the way to closing in on 300 pounds.

There were a lot of things that factored into my weight gain, and I won't take the time today to go into all of that since I've blogged extensively about this in the past. However, I do believe that one of the problems was that I had a diet mentality that was focused on the very short-term goal of getting into a size by a certain date. Once I was back in that size (even if it wasn't the size I wanted to be in), the motivation was gone. Or once the date had passed, even if I hadn't reached my goal of getting into the size, the motivation was also gone.

I remember trying to lose weight before each of my daughter's weddings. I waited as long as I could to order my dress, then ordered the dress in a size that was snug as a motivation to lose weight. Both times I ended up having the dress altered and let out, because I never lost any weight. When my second daughter got married, I was really worried that they wouldn't be able to let it out enough for the dress to not be tight, and I was incredibly mad at myself that I had once again failed to do what I'd hoped to do. But once the dress was altered and I knew I was going to look as good as I possibly could in the dress, the pressure was once again off.

Four years ago, prior to a trip we took to the Pacific Northwest, I actually managed to lose 36 pounds and drop two sizes. I felt great and was so happy to not be at my top weight for the trip, but once we were home and the pressure was off, the weight came right back on.

What was different for me when I began on Take Shape for Life/Medifast was that, for once, I wasn't trying to lose weight for an event. I started on the program on June 24, 2007, a most inconvenient time of the year for me. Fresh fruit was just coming into season and we tend to do a lot of socializing over the summer, and I knew both of these things (plus a host of other things) would make it a challenge. I started on the program five weeks before we left for two weeks at a lake cottage we rent, and I knew we usually threw caution to the wind when we were at the cottage and snacked and ate with abandon. It was a most inconvenient time for sure, but that finally didn't matter. I wasn't dieting for an event or to get into a pair of summer slacks, I was on a journey to get healthy. I knew it was going to be a long journey and I realized that there wasn't a better time than that minute because I was finally ready.

The reality is that when you're ready to make a permanent change in your life, what's happening around you doesn't matter so much any more. There will always be events, there will always be stress, there will always be people who will do their best to encourage you to take "just a bite, just this once." If we aren't ready to make permanent changes, it's likely that any and all of these types of things will derail us just as they derailed me over and over again. But if you're ready to make a permanent change - if you are really, truly sick to death of being overweight - you will figure out what you need to do to stay on plan.

When we're ready to start creating something wonderful and new in our lives, it's amazing to see the transformation that begins to happen in our hearts and minds. I've seen it over and over again in the people I work with. Some are more ready than they even realize and they embrace this program in its entirety and experience amazing and life-changing results, while others dabble with the program and find themselves on and off every time it's not convenient to stay on plan.

How we approach this program and how we choose to work it is up to us and depends on what we ultimately want. Choose wisely :-)