Breaking the 11th Commandment

People are SO interesting! The more I'm out and about talking to people, the more interesting they get. Yesterday was a good example.

I met a friend at Panera Bread for coffee, and while I waited in line to order my coffee (black!), a couple of girls (both very thin teenagers) two ahead of me in line ordered a huge cinnamon roll. The lady in line just ahead of me and just behind the two girls groaned when she saw the cinnamon roll and asked the girls how on earth they could eat that and stay so thin, then turned to me and said that she'd gain five pounds just looking at it. I told her that I avoided those things like the plague because I didn't want to regain the 126 pounds I lost, and that started a conversation. The woman was quite heavy and went on to tell me that she had lost about 30 pounds a few years ago but subsequently gained it all back, then talked about how frustrated she was and how much she wanted to lose weight. Of course I told her about our program and how wonderful it was, and her response was to tell me to not listen to what she was going to order . . . then she proceeded to order a variety of baked goods and smoothies, all while holding a bag of potato chips in her hand. I smiled and told her that there was no judgment on my part, then I wished her a good day and she left.

Here's what's interesting about this: this was an individual who clearly needed to lose weight and who was willing to talk about it with me, a total stranger, yet she was taking actions that would take her in the exact opposite direction.

Last night I attended a meeting that concluded with an ice cream social. I stayed for the social so I could talk to some long-time friends, but opted to just have a cup of coffee and wait until I got home to have some of the new Medifast peanut butter soft serve ice cream :-). One of the women I talked to there spent several minutes talking to me about how frustrated she was about her weight gain and how much she wanted to lose weight, eating an ice cream cone the entire time she talked to me.

Again, this woman (whom I didn't know very well) was willing to talk about her frustration with her weight while, at the same time, doing something that was counterproductive to what she claimed to want.

Why do we do this to ourselves? I say "we" because we've all done this. We give lip service to something while our actions are the exact opposite. When we do this, we are violating the 11th Commandment, which is "Thou shalt not kid thyself."

One of the things I've come to believe is that ultimately we end up doing what we really want to do. Many of us know we should want different things, better things - like getting healthy - but if getting healthy falls into the "we know we should" category rather than us making the fundamental choice to get healthy, it won't happen. We can spend a lot of time feeling guilty because we know that we SHOULD, but if we haven't decided in our heart of hearts that this is what we REALLY want, we'll end up in line buying an assortment of baked goods while we complain to a total stranger that we need to lose weight.

Once we make the fundamental decision to get to a healthy weight, we will begin to make the secondary choices that will move us in the direction we want to go. That's not to say that there might not be a misstep or two along the way, but once we determine that this is what we want, we will figure out what we need to do to make it happen.

So what do you want today? Not "what SHOULD you want?" but "What do you REALLY want?" If you really, truly want to get to a healthy weight, then this program is the fastest and safest way to get you there! More than that, this program will teach you the healthy habits you need to stay at a healthy weight for the rest of your life - if that's what you want.

My challenge today is to be honest with yourself about what you want, then make the choices you need that will support that choice. First, be honest, then choose wisely :-)