Happy Birthday to My Husband!

Today is my husband's 62st birthday and I am taking this opportunity to wish him a VERY happy birthday!  John and I met my freshman year in college - I was 18 and he was 19 - started dating a year later and married two years after that.  It is hard for me to believe that he is celebrating his 62nd birthday . . . I am shaking my head in disbelief.  I told him that while our commitment was to grow old together, I just didn't expect to get here so fast :-).

Even though he is in his 60's and will get his first Social Security check in March (more disbelief here!), my husband is healthier than he's been for most of his adult life.  When we got married in 1973, he was overweight - pudgy probably best described him at that time.  I cooked up a storm that first year of marriage and managed to pack another 20 pounds on him (and a few pounds on myself, too).  We did a couple of crazy diets together and while I dropped the weight and was fairly successful in keeping it off until my mid-30's, other than a brief period of time when he adopted a rigid diet and took up running to lose weight, John was overweight his entire adult life.

That all changed five years ago.  He watched me lose weight beginning in June of 2007 and by January of 2008, he was ready to try Take Shape for Life for himself.  In three months' time he lost 50 pounds and has maintained his weight loss.  By losing weight, he was also able to get off his blood pressure medication.  Heart disease runs in his family and both his father and his older brother had heart attacks in their early 60's.  Had John not gotten healthy, he may well have been facing heart disease himself by this point in his life.

Five years ago he made the choice to get healthy, and I'm so thankful he did.  Because of that choice and all of the choices he's made since that time, Lord willing, I look forward to celebrating many more birthdays with him!

Have a great Wednesday, and remember to choose wisely :-)

Raise Your Hand If This Isn't Fun Anymore

I've received several positive comments from individuals who enjoy reading some of the blogs I wrote five years ago while I was on 5&1.  Since it's good for me to remember and since it's helpful to at least a few of you, today I'm posting a blog I wrote five years ago, in January of 2008.

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I'm still 100% on plan and have been since starting Take Shape for Life/Medifast last June 24, but wow, am I getting a bit weary of the whole thing!  I'm two pounds away from my BMI dropping below 30 (I will officially be "overweight" - woo hoo!!) and I'm looking pretty darn good for a grandmother of 4 closing in on my 56th birthday.  However, I recognize this as VERY dangerous thinking for me.  I don't want to settle for "good enough" or certainly for "good enough for someone MY age."  I want (and need) the satisfaction of seeing this through all the way to my goal.  And since my doctor agreed with my goal of 130, I can't exactly rationalize quitting early.  I know myself well enough to know that if I stop now, even though I've come a long way and am wearing sizes I haven't been able to wear in over 20 years, I will feel, in my heart of hearts, that I failed.  I'm afraid that thinking could be the first step towards regaining all of the weight that I've lost so far, and I can't go there.

Because I'm one pound away from having lost 80 pounds, I had my husband take a couple pictures of me so I could get them ready for my (hopefully soon!) "80 Pounds Gone Progress Photos" post (I figure I won't look any different one pound from now).  I put the progress photos together with a few "before" photos and Photoshopped all of them into a single photo.  I did this as much for me as for anyone else, because I really need to SEE where I was and how far I've come.  That helps to keep me motivated, even on days when I'm sick of being on MF, sick of skipping over all of the really YUMMY food selections on the restaurant's menu and deciding between which kind of grilled meat I'm going to order THIS time.  I'm tired of skipping the sauces, holding the butter, passing on the bread, and saying no to the desserts.  BUT then I look at my "before" pictures and realize all over again how worth it all of this is, and I know that's exactly how I'll feel when I reach my final goal.

I also have to remind myself that in the past six months I have gone from being on the brink of diabetes to NORMAL (even my doctor said so!), from needing meds to keep my cholesterol down to having normal cholesterol WITHOUT meds, from having blood pressure that was on the rise to NORMAL, HEALTHY blood pressure, and from having so much pain in my knee that I could hardly walk to literally running up and down stairs.  All of that is worth it - wow, is it EVER!

So my thinking today is something like this:  Is this still fun for me?  Not particularly, but so what?  Am I getting a bit bored with the whole thing?  Yes, but so what?  Was it fun being 260 pounds????  Was it fun shopping for the very largest sizes my local woman's store carried?  Was it fun worrying about being diabetic?  Was it fun paying the copay every month for my cholesterol meds?  Was it fun having pain with every step, taking stairs one at a time, and not being able to wear some fun high heels?

This is my reality check on a very cold January in Michigan.  Yes, I'm bored and a bit tired of the whole thing, but boredom won't kill me and obesity might.  And I'm worth reaching my goal, and my family is worth me reaching my goal.  For once in my life, it's about doing what I KNOW I need to do, not what I feel like doing. 

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I had many days after I wrote this blog when I wasn't having fun staying on plan, when I was bored to death with my food choices (there are a lot more Medifast food options now than there were five years ago).  However, I stayed on plan regardless of how I felt.  When I reached my goal, I had NO regrets for having made the choices I did!  Five years later, I still have to choose every day whether or not I'm going to do what I need to do or what I want to do (still waiting for the "want" and "need" to consistently be one and the same!).  You face the same choice every day, too.  Let's choose wisely :-)

"Shoulds" and "Musts"

Is losing weight and getting healthy on your "should" list or is it on your "must" list?  How you answer that just might make the difference between reaching your goal and maintaining your weight loss and falling short of where you want to be.

Peak performance coach and human behavior expert Tony Robbins says that when people aren't achieving their goals, it is often because they haven't made it a "must." 

“People give up on achiev­ing their goals because they are ‘shoulds’ and not ‘musts,’” says Robbins.  “ But when something becomes an absolute must for you, when you cut off any other possibility in your mind, then you will do whatever it takes to achieve your goal.”

Do you retain the option of not losing weight?  Have you left yourself open to the possibility of staying overweight?  If you can honestly answer "yes" to either of these questions, you are possibly approaching this program as a "should" rather than a "must."  As long as we're approaching weight loss as a "should," we're allowing ourselves the possibility of failure.

However, if we've made this a "must" in our lives, if there is no other allowable option other than getting to our goal, we will find a way - or make a way - to overcome the obstacles that we face.  That doesn't mean that we might not slip, because a "must" doesn't necessarily ensure 100% compliance 100% of the time (thought that is highly recommended!).  "Must" means that if we do slip, we pick ourselves up and keep on going.

When I placed my first Take Shape for Life order, I had finally reached the point that losing weight was no longer a "should", it was a "must."  I told my husband that night that I couldn't continue in the body I was trapped in anymore.  I had finally reached the point when I was ready, and that made all of the difference.

One more thought:  the "must" has to be YOUR "must", not someone else's.  If you are thinking that you "must" lose weight because your doctor told you to, or because your husband or someone else is urging you to lose weight, then your "must" is still a "should."  "Must" comes from deep inside of you, it is not the product of external pressure.  Regardless of how intense that pressure might be, if it's coming from someplace else, it's a "should."  YOU have to want this, and YOU have to make the decision that there is simply no other alternative.

Medifast's medical director and Take Shape for Life co-founder, Dr. Wayne Scott Andersen, calls this point "making the fundamental choice to get healthy."  In his wonderful book, Dr.A's Habits of Health (which I highly recommend!), he writes at length about choices, starting with the fundamental choice to get to a healthy weight.  Once we've made that choice, we will made the secondary choices necessary to support our fundamental choice because we've left ourselves no other options.

So is this a "should" or a "must" for you?  If getting to a healthy weight is a "must", then carefully consider the choices you'll have to make today, then choose wisely :-)

Hanging On and Letting Go

What are you holding on to today?  I'm asking this question because I've realized that sometimes we desperately hold on to things that are no longer serving our best interest - sometimes they never did.  

When it comes to losing weight and getting healthy, many of us struggle to release old patterns of eating.  We struggle and want to hold on to our favorite foods, even when those foods and our relationship to them landed us in an unhealthy BMI range, perhaps even contributing to illness and disease.  When we struggle to let go of what is no longer working for us, we may end up going off plan repeatedly.  We hang on to those old things and look at them as forbidden fruit; we feel deprived because we can't have the very things that got us here in the first place.

In Beth Moore's Bible study, "Breaking Free," one of the things she said that really resonated with me is that "whatever we give up is only to free our hands so we can receive all God has for us."  We can't receive something new if our hands are full of old stuff.

I have a picture in mind right now of hands that are tightly gripped around something old and rotting, fingertips white because the grip is so tight.  Within reach is something new and beautiful, but to take that new thing into the hand, the old will first have to be released.  The problem is that the old, while rotting, is familiar - it fits in the hand and the hand is warm from holding it for so long.  Letting go of the old thing means that, for a split second, the hand will be empty and cold.  It's uncertain how the new thing will fit and feel in the hand, so even though it looks beautiful and most desirable, the idea of actually having that in hand is pretty scary.

Some of us have struggled with being overweight or obese for a long time.  We hate how we look and feel, and part of us really wants to reach out and claim the healthy body and new life that is within our reach.  Before we can do that, we have to let go of the old, rotting habits.  Letting go of them isn't deprivation - it's freedom.  It doesn't feel like that at first because those habits have become so comfortable and warm in our hands.  But once we're willing to recognize them for what they are, things that are keeping us in a place we don't want to be, and once we're willing to loosen our grip and let them go, we are able to receive something far better.

It's not easy!  I wish it was, but it's not.  But it's worth it.  Shift your eyes from what you're hanging on to and really focus on what is is that you want.  Shift your focus, then choose wisely :-)

Wrestling With a Grizzly Bear

We got hammered with snow over the past couple of days - winter has settled in for a nice, long stay here in Michigan.  Several inches of snow cover the ground and more snow is on it's way.  I joke that those of us who experience this type of weather (I resisted the urge to write "endure"!) have a deeper appreciation for spring, summer and fall than those who are surrounded by green grass and flowers twelve months of the year, but the truth is that this kind of weather has a tendency to drag me down.  Because we live very near Lake Michigan, we typically get a lot of cloud cover most of the winter and going for days without sunshine probably contributes to that dragged-down feeling.

Truth is, this time of year brings out the grizzly bear in me - all I want to do is put on a nice layer of fat via lots of carbs and sugar and then sleep until spring :-).  For years, that's pretty much how I coped with our Michigan winters.  Even in my 20's and early 30's when I was at a healthy weight, I'd pick up around 10 pounds every winter then take it off in the spring and summer and just accepted the fact that my winter slacks were a size larger than my summer ones.  I didn't understand at that time that I was really yo-yo dieting and that each gain/lose/gain cycle was actually increasing my percentage of body fat, so I succumbed to the inclination to carb load and curl up under a blanket with a book.

To be honest, that is STILL my inclination . . . but that's not what I do anymore.  As tempting as it is to reach for those carbs and vegetate under a blanket, I'm making different choices these days.  That grizzly bear tendency is still there and it still growls at me, but I'm growling back :-).  I know that what I really want is to be thin and healthy, and grizzly bear living is NOT the way to have what I really want.  So, whether I feel like it or not, I make healthy choices and I move my body.

I think that my seasonal battle with the grizzly bear can most likely be attributed to my self-diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), but I've found that eating right and staying active actually helps to calm the grizzly bear.  I also take extra Vitamin D to make up for the sunshine that we miss - the extra D helps minimize some of the winter blahs, too, and I have a light therapy box that I can use as well.

Sometimes it's just plain hard to make the choices we know we should be making when we frankly feel like doing something else.  If we are taking a short view of life, we'll go for the immediate gratification and follow our instincts almost every time.  The challenge is to shift our focus and look at where we want to be in 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months from now.  If we stay focused on where we want to be, and if that's what we REALLY want, we will then be able to make choices that will support what we want.

So it really doesn't matter how we feel today - what matters is what we want tomorrow and the day after that.  Focus on what you want, then choose wisely :-)

Excuses

Before I started on 5:1, I had a million and one excuses (known as "reasons" in those days) as to why I was obese, why I couldn't stay on a program, why I couldn't lose weight.  I won't bore you by listing some of those excuses, although I'm guessing that some of my excuses were your excuses, too :-).

For all of us who have excuses why we can't do one thing or another, whether it's losing weight or something else, please take a few minutes and watch this video from a recent episode of Oprah . . . it blew me away, and it blew Oprah away, too!

Choose wisely :-)

Pressing On

In this new year, just about everyone I knows has a new enthusiasm and determination to get back on track and get their weight off.  You have to love New Year's resolutions!  The challenge for most of us when it comes to those resolutions is that all too often we quickly lose our focus.  

In Beth Moore’s “Believing God Day by Day” devotional book, she writes:

The middle of any challenging journey can be the most critical point.  Many of us may not be where we were, but we’re not yet where we want to go.  Perhaps the terrible bondage of Egypt is behind us, but the land of promise seems remote.The longer we wander in the wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land, the greater the chance that we’ll return to captivity.  The pull of familiar comforts and habits can feel overpowering, particularly against the uncertainty of Canaan’s unknowns.  But as we persevere, God is faithful to continually give us the extra push of motivation to press on.

Once we've been on plan for a while and lost some weight, and once we've dropped a size or two, the pressing need to lose weight can start to feel a bit, well, less pressing.  We've entered that state in our weight loss journey where the pain of where we were (Egypt) has lessened, but we aren't quite yet to the Promised Land (our goal weight).  That in-between time can be challenging, and it's easy to lose motivation and begin to slip into old habits.  We may begin to think, "I've done really well - look how far I've come.  I deserve a "treat" today."  Or we think, "I'll take a mini break from being on plan and view it as a test to see how I'll do in maintenance."  

I'm here to encourage you to keep pressing on - don't stop now.  Don't take a break - just keep moving forward!

In Dr. Andersen's book, "Dr. A's Habits of Health," he writes about shifting our focus from where we started to looking ahead to where we want to go and what we want to achieve, which is optimal health.  (This book is terrific, and if you haven't ordered it yet, make sure you do.  Everything you could possibly want to know about how to reach and maintain optimal health is there.)  

Over 4-1/2 years since reaching my goal, I am finding the need to continue to focus on moving forward in my own journey towards optimal health (and it is an ongoing journey!).  It's been over 5-1/2 years since I first started on 5&1, so each day takes me a little bit farther away from the pain and misery I experienced at 260 pounds.  It's easy for me to forget how miserable I was, and it's also easy to begin to rationalize unhealthy eating.  I have had to refocus on what I want, which is optimal health for the rest of my life.  Being back on 5&1 to peel off a few pounds I've picked up, getting to the health club for a good workout on a regular basis, whether I feel like it or not, getting adequate rest - all of these things have me moving in the direction I want to go and it feels great!

Regardless of whether you're just getting started, somewhere in the middle of your journey, or, like me, dealing with the challenges of maintaining a healthy weight, the challenge for all of us is the same: to make sure that stay focused on what we want and continue to choose wisely :-).