More Ripple Effects

Yesterday's post about losing weight from the inside out resulted in a phone call from a friend, who wanted to share with me her own story of inside out weight loss.  She's my age (we were born on the same day), we're the same height (5'5") and we both reached the same all-time high weight of 268.  To make things even more interesting, we're also both redheads!  She and I have each lost over 100 pounds and have a whole new life.

She shared with me some of the emotional and spiritual growth that has occurred since her weight loss and also told me that losing weight also prompted her to get counseling to deal with some of the issues that led to her weight gain.  She then went on to talk about how losing weight was the catalyst for change in other areas of her life, even encouraging her to declutter her home.

I wrote a week or so ago about the ripple effect our weight loss can have on others, but my friend's call reminded me of another kind of ripple effect our weight loss can have - on ourselves.  We've all known of people who changed their hairstyle or hair color after losing weight, but the ripple effect goes much farther than just externals (not that I'm knocking a new hair style!).  Once we begin to realize mastery over our long struggle with weight, it's amazing to see how much energy we begin to have to tackle other areas of our lives, whether it's long-standing emotional baggage or just a messy closet. 

For others, losing weight can be the key that unlocks a prison of perfectionism.  For me, when I was at my top weight, I was very much a perfectionist in other areas of my life.  I was unable to control my weight, but I tried hard to control other areas of my life (amazingly, my husband has always thought that I'm easy to live with!).  I knew that some people had the perception that overweight people are lazy (which I've always known wasn't true), so I worked hard to dispel that notion and kept busy with multiple projects so that I was "productive" most of the time.  I tried to make sure that my hair, makeup and accessories were "perfect" so that nobody would look at my size and conclude that I had just stopped caring about myself.  It was exhausting, but provided a pretty good cover so people wouldn't guess how much inward turmoil I was experiencing.  As I lost weight, I was also finally able to let go of some of that miserable and impossible-to-sustain perfectionism - what freedom!

Losing weight began a ripple effect for both me and my friend, and after changing so many things in our own lives, the ripple finally began expanding beyond us to our family members and friends.

It all began with a choice that both my friend and I made to lose weight, and a choice to stay on plan.  We each hoped that we'd maybe lose a little bit of weight, but we ended up changing our entire lives.  Amazing!

My encouragement to you today is to make a choice to start changing your own life - one day at a time!