Resolutions

Why is it that it's the end of February and I'm still trying to wrap my head around not having a New Year's Resolution. Each and every year for as long as I can remember, I've tried to give something up in order to lose weight. Now that my mindset has shifted to not necessarily losing a ton of weight, but trying to be more healthy, I feel less of a sense of urgency in my resolutions. I actually did tell myself in the New Year, I was going to give up diet soda. I did it for a few weeks and then caved when I saw a delicious diet doctor pepper, it was worth it friends, it was gooooood. I then rationalized this decision by telling myself that nothing should be off limits, and that I need to just do the whole moderation thing again. I feel like this mindset has gotten me in trouble before. Time will tell.

I can tell you that I have some good news, I finally hit that magic number my Doctor and I agreed upon almost 2 and a half years ago- 175 pounds. I will also tell you that I don't feel completely finished on my weight loss journey. I struggle, EVERYDAY, not just some days or some hours. I have an eating disorder, it will never disappear and is always sitting right in the back of my mind. I am trying to very carefully not transfer my food addiction to something else this time around as well. If you've struggled with any form of addiction, you know this happens easily. I was reminded that the new WW program talks about your "why". I've thought about it, and I can't articulate exactly what my why is, but I can say is that it's a culmination of many of the things I've talked about here on this blog. If you've read it, you can see that the past few years I've been writing, I've gone up, down, up, down, and way back up and then way down again. It can almost make you sea sick to follow this journey.
I am often encouraged by reading other people's goals, but the whole "I want to fit in a size, x", or "I want to fly without the seatbelt expander", those are no longer things that would motivate me, and finding your why is all about motivation. I suppose I can break it down to my why not- why not to continue the destructive path I had chosen for myself- why not to model the kind of food choices and behaviors I was opting for, in hopes for something better for my kids. When it comes down to it, my why is for my kids- not the jeans, not the vacation bikini, not even the lifetime achievement award through WW where you get to stop paying for your membership. My why is to be here- physically- because at over 300 pounds I know my life expectancy wasn't going to be what I wanted. My kids are the ones that motivate me- they see me eat well, they eat well. They see me head off to the gym, they want to be active. Although I don't want to say that embarrassments of the past have motivated me, they really have. I don't want my kids to endure the embarrassment of their friend drawing a "fat Mom pic" of me, and although this happened years ago, it stuck with me.  Poor Tommy felt so bad, he was in tears over the whole mess. It's not on him to fight my battles. No, we can't protect them from everything and everyone, but it is up to me to model the way.
This is my why.