A Few More Thoughts

I have a couple more thoughts about Tuesday night's kick off of the new season of "Biggest Loser."  I hope you'll humor me just one more day :-)

First of all, I couldn't help but notice the faces of the family members and friends as each contestant publicly weighed in and shared their store.  Many of those faces were wet with tears as they shared the pain of their loved one who announced to the entire country their weight and their struggle.  Sometimes we think our struggle with weight is ours alone, but the reality is that it really does impact those we love.  Perhaps our weight keeps us from enjoying some activities with them (I was loathe to engage in any activity with my family if it required me to put on a swimsuit); perhaps they've heard us snore in our sleep or watched us huff and puff up a flight of stairs and they've worried in silence about our health.  Some of us have family members and friends who've tried to be helpful and make suggestions (and congratulations to everyone reading this who resisted the urge to strangle them since you probably don't appreciate well-intentioned but unsolicited advice any more than I do!).  Whether our family members have been silent or not, whether or not they've been co-conspirators in our unhealthy eating habits, they have been impacted by our own struggle.

What's amazing is that they can be impacted in an entirely different way as we continue to make the choices needed to get to a healthy weight.  I've written before about the ripple effect that your weight loss will have on those around you and I've shared my own story, so I won't repeat it here.  Just know that other people you know and love will get healthier as they begin to follow your own example.

The other thing I took note of was the sad story of one contestant who shared that her brother had tried out for a previous season of "Biggest Loser" and that sometime later (he wasn't chosen), he passed away in his sleep at a relatively young age due to complications of his obesity.

So many of us played mind games for years, telling ourselves that another day of unhealthy eating really didn't matter, promising that we'd start one diet or another "next Monday."  We did that always assuming that we would somehow be able to get away with our unhealthy habits indefinitely, and also assuming that there would be a day when it would finally be convenient to lose weight.  We basically gambled with our health, and some of us gambled with our lives.  We are blessed to be here today with the opportunity in our hands to turn things around.  It may not be easy, but thank God that we're here and have a program that can return us to a healthy state of being, even if we haven't been there in decades - or ever.  This program is a gift (even if we feel like returning the gift sometimes!) and today is a good day to acknowledge this.  We have been given the opportunity to add not only years to our lives, but to dramatically improve the quality of those years.  Thank God that we didn't run out of time like the brother of the Biggest Loser contestant!

The choices we may today will set in motion choices we'll make tomorrow and the day after that.  Those choices will have long-reaching consequences for not only ourselves, but also for those we love.  Choose wisely :-)