Rethinking Freedom

Freedom is something we all want, something we are willing to fight for, something that many brave men and women have died to protect.  I am so thankful for the freedom that we have in America to live our lives and pursue our dreams. 

We all want to live free, so it's ironic that sometimes the wrong use of freedom leads to restriction and bondage instead.  That point was brought home last night as I watched a program on TLC about an individual whose morbid obesity eventually left him bed-bound as his weight soared to over 1,000 pounds.  His freedom to eat whatever he wanted in whatever quantity he wanted (consuming as much as 35,000 calories a day!) resulted in him not leaving his bed for four years, totally dependent on others for everything, even the most basic of his care.

That's an extreme example, of course, but the truth of "freedom gone wrong" certainly played out in my own life.  I had the freedom to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it, in whatever quantity I wanted.  The problem was that the more I did that, the less free I was.  I not only became a slave to food due to emotional eating, but the more I weighed, the more restrictive my life became.  My shopping choices were limited (and not much fun), there were chairs I didn't fit in, I avoided stairs or had to take them one painful step at a time, I didn't go swimming, and I felt self-conscious around others.  The misuse of the freedom I had led to a level of bondage that I never could have envisioned.

The irony is that going on Take Shape for Life/Medifast, an admittedly restrictive program with no "wiggle room", gave me my life back.  While I was on 5&1, there were a lot of things I didn't eat, but every day on plan brought me one day closer to a level of freedom I never could have envisioned.

The freedom to make choices is a freedom that we don't always pay a lot of attention to.  We make our choices, but we can't choose the consequences.  The choices we make will ultimately either lead to greater freedom or more restrictions.  Choose wisely :-)