Getting a New Perspective

This past Thursday, one of my friends came over to rearrange much of my house. She is a designer and offered to barter her services - I jumped at the chance (we're still not sure what I'll do for her in exchange). She specializes in redesign - using the things a person already has in a new, fresh way. I told her that I am not in a position to be purchasing a lot of new things, so she worked with what I already have. After looking around my rooms and doing some measuring, she began to shop my house, going from room to room to look for things that she could use. Three hours later, my living room had a new furniture arrangement, my sunroom had a new, fresh look and things had been moved around in both the master bedroom and our son's room. She added some things, moved things around, and deleted some things from the decor. The end result is that I fell in love with my house all over again.

So what does all of this have to do with staying on plan and losing weight, you may be asking? Simply this: we can get a fresh perspective with the stuff we already have if we just look at it in a new way, and looking at things in a new way can make us appreciate them all over again.

If you're new to Take Shape for Life/Medifast, you are adjusting to a new way of eating. Most likely you're eating more often than you used to and you're definitely eating differently than you did before (a good thing, since the way we ate before was what caused us to be here!). It may feel awkward right now, but there is a level of excitement and hope as you see the pounds beginning to drop. You are getting a fresh perspective on eating, rediscovering how good you feel, and you're hopefully starting to redefine your relationship with food.

If you've been on the program for a while, you've undoubtedly settled into a fairly predictable routine. You know the drill - 5 Medifast meals and a lean & green, lots of water - and this may or may not be fun anymore. It probably isn't that exciting anymore, even though the scale continues to drop (at least this was true for me several months into the program). What started out as exciting has become, well, not so exciting, and this can be a dangerous time if our perspective doesn't change. I've seen it over and over again - individuals who do well on plan for a long time, but then boredom sets in and they decide to "take a break" and enjoy some of their old favorite foods, promising themselves that they'll get back on plan "next week." Sometimes that works, but a lot of times that decision is the beginning of a long, upward march up the scale. Some of these individuals eventually get back on plan, but there are others who never do.

If the last paragraph described you, it's time for a fresh perspective :-). I encourage everyone to take "before" photos when they start the program, as well as take their measurements, then take new photos and measurements every month. I did that and it was amazing to see the progress captured in photos and on the tape measure. When I started feeling restless with this program, I would sometimes look at my photos and be reminded of how far I'd already come (it's amazing how quickly we can forget where we were!). I'd take my measurements and celebrate that another inch or two had come off my body, sometimes even if the scale hadn't moved.

The other thing I did was refocus on where I wanted to go. I tried to keep in my mind a picture of my at my goal weight; I tried to imagine how much fun it would be to be able to go shopping, what it would feel like to be comfortable with my body. Shifting my focus from where I was to where I wanted to go gave me a new perspective - I was on a journey towards something I really wanted, something that was worth the effort. When I did that, and when I took stock of the progress I'd already made, I found myself reinvigorated and ready to keep going with a new level of energy.

We've chosen to be on this program, and every day we not only get to choose whether or not we're going to stay on plan, we also get to choose the attitude we'll have. With that in mind, today I encourage you to choose wisely :-).