Happy New Year!

Happy 2012!  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's, and I also hope that you're ready to make 2012 your healthiest year ever.  It doesn't matter if you're just starting on this program for the first time or if this is your umpteenth go-around.  It also doesn't matter if you blew it royally over the holidays.  The only thing that matters is that you've made a decision NOW to create something wonderful - a healthy, thin YOU, living the life you want to live.

That may sound next to impossible to some of you; it sure sounded impossible to me when I started on this program in June of 2007.  I was desperate to lose weight but, at 5'5" and 260 pounds, I didn't think it was possible to lose the weight I needed to lose.  Two decades of failure with multiple weight loss attempts only reinforced what I believed to be true.  Funny thing, though - what I believed to be true about my inability to lose weight ended up not being true at all!  I not only lost a total of 126 pounds on this program, reaching my goal in May of 2008, but I've been fairly successful in maintaining my weight loss ever since.  I say "fairly successful" because I haven't done maintenance perfectly, but I'm still wearing my size 6 jeans . . . sometimes they're a bit more snug than I prefer, but this program has given me the tools I need to know what to do when the scale blips up.

So how do you shift gears and move forward, even if you don't really believe you can?   It's simple (please note:  I said "simple," not "easy"!).  You shift gears by focusing on what you want.  Have you made the decision to lose weight and get to a healthy weight?  I'm not talking about you wanting to lose weight, because just about everybody wants to lose weight :-).  I'm asking if you've made the decision to lose weight and get healthy.  This isn't a matter of semantics.  Everyone wants to lose weight and would opt to do so in a heartbeat if it could be done quickly and without giving anything up.  However, very few people actually make the fundamental decision to get to a healthy weight, because once you make that decision, things begin to change.

It's not that making the decision to get to a healthy weight somehow waves a wand that magically makes it happen, but once you make the fundamental decision and focus on what you want, you will begin to make the choices necessary to support that decision.  Making the decision also doesn't mean that you won't ever slip up, because some of you will, but if you have your eyes on your goal and keep focused, you'll keep moving forward.

Forget what's happened in the past - you can't change it.  The past can only rule your present and determine your future if you allow it to.  Today, at the beginning of 2012, you can set your course for a different future - IF you know what you want and have made the decision to go for it.  Once you've done that and focused on what you want, all that's left to do is make the choices that will support your decision.   Decide, focus, then choose wisely :-)