Not much of a foody post today, as I didn’t have too much new to eat today, plus I had to work. Just for your enjoyment, however, I will give you lunch of vanilla Chobani greek yogurt, strawberries, and Kashi GoLean!
But, in all seriousness, I wanted to touch a little more on something I wrote earlier this week. I read a lot of blogs when I get the chance (I’m surprised my reader hasn’t caught on fire yet!), and fairly often there is a theme about starting and starting over again.
When I wrote my 100 pound anniversary post, I had written this sentence:
I made it through a bunch of holidays, the Superbowl, New Orleans, birthdays and the like to varying degrees of success.
That was a whole year of events that happened that I had to figure out how to deal with in one form or another. Whether that was to indulge, try to eat sensibly, or do extra exercise to compensate, or have an utter fail (hey, it happens). So many times we say “I’ll start to eat right on Monday”, or “After the holidays” or “After we eat this junk in the house” or “I have so much coming up this month, I’ll start next month”.
Well, these events are going to happen whether you are trying to lose weight or not. All it will do it put you that much further behind from achieving your goals. And the other thing more insidious thing is that giving yourself a future start date tends to make you eat way more as sort of a ‘last meal’ mentality. And as my mother said the other day when we talked about this a bit, all of those events happen during maintenance, too – for the rest of your life.
So don’t wait for next week or even tomorrow. Make the commitment right now. You and your future self will be so thankful for it.
Great post, your yogurt looks good with you Kashi golean, but I use the golean crunch!!!!
Great advice. You are absolutely right. The temptations will always be there and we have to learn how to live with them.
That is so true Lori, there is no “tomorrow!” I always remind myself, this is not a diet, this is my life!
You are right – when I weighed 300 pounds I kept putting off getting started, waiting for just the perfect day and the perfect time. Turns out there weren’t any! After losing all my weight twelve years ago, I totally agree with you – start now – because each day gives you a new chance to begin again. Thanks for the post!
LOVE this post!! Ever since I started taking this “health” thing seriously, I stopped saying things like “I’ll start tomorrow.” Change is a series of choices you make, and putting off making the right choices will only postpone whatever you want to accomplish. It’s more important to make the right decision in the moment rather than assume you’ll make it in the future.
With that said though, it’s also important to know when to treat yourself
My future self thanks you for reminding me not to wait one more day!
Thank you for this post! You are completely right.
Lori, you are so right on target. I have a post on my blog from a while back about “the decision“. Nothing in life is more than a decision away. Once the decision is made, everything else is simple (not easy, simple). Once you make the decision, it means you start now, not tomorrow morning. Decisions get weak over the hours, that is why it is so important to start now.
Great post Lori – everyone should read it.
I am usually one of those starters and re-starters. But lately I have noticed a shift in my thinking and it isn’t always “oh well, screwed up this meal. Might as well eat whatever for the rest of the day and re-start tomorrow.” Now it is more like, darn, I screwed up. Oh well. Dinner will be better and tomorrow too.” This way of thinking has seemed to lift that burden off my shoulder and I no longer dred having to change my way of eating for life.
p.s. I am loving those green smoothies for breakfast. I have noticed they are giving me LOTS of enery for work.
[...] Original post by Lori [...]
All I have to add is ‘Amen, sister. Preach on!’