3 Ways to Enjoy the Time Until You Lose the Weight

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3 Ways to Enjoy the Time Until You Lose the Weight

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2008 | POSTED BY MICHELLE

Steve Tyler says, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” The problem with weight loss (and so many other things) is that we’re so goal-oriented. Even practices like meditation and yoga that are meant to bring you into the present are about getting to the end so you can say you completed it and feel like you did your part in staying healthy. People go to school, not to learn, but to earn a degree. People make love, not to experience connection and sensuality, but to climax. People eat well and exercise, not to nourish and care for themselves, but to lose weight.

When you have a lot of weight to lose reaching that goal can be a long way off. So, what do you do to make your journey worthwhile until you arrive at your destination.

1. REMEMBER MORE IS AT STAKE THAN JUST YOUR WEIGHT - For emotional eaters it’s not just our weight that suffers, it’s our quality of life. If we are turning to food to comfort it means that we’re not expressing ourselves honestly, that we haven’t found an outlet for our passion and dreams or that we’re staving off our dissatisfaction. Therefore, the more we admit our real needs and attend to them, the better our lives are and the less we need food as a crutch. On our way to our goal weight are many moments when we have the opportunity to be true to ourselves instead of eating.

2. EXERCISE & EATING WELL IS A WAY TO LOVE YOURSELF – It’s been said that you can’t love another person or be loved by another person until you know how to love yourself. But if you’re like me that whole thing sounds like an abstract concept, in other words a potential load of bull. What does loving yourself actually mean? Well, each time you make a choice to eat well, to avoid junk food, to go out for that walk, to go to the gym despite the cold weather, to plan and cook healthful meals, you are loving yourself. For some people, who never had loving, nurturing parents, this is actually a way to re-parent yourself. Each choice becomes an opportunity to love yourself instead of it being a moment where you feel resentful of being deprived.

3. YOUR BAGGAGE GOES WITH YOUR WEIGHT - For many people who have been delaying their growth and development by overeating, each pound lost represents a step towards a more evolved self. When you eat instead of coping, you disable your best thinking. Over time you lose confidence that you can, in fact, cope without the comfort of food. By facing your demons, the old ones and the everyday ones, you get stronger. August Wilson, the playwright, said, "As my spirit got bigger, my demons got smaller." Your baggage starts to fall away with each lost pound. Therefore, your journey can be walked with a lighter step, both literally and metaphorically.

So many people that write in to us share that when they stop eating for emotional reasons they gain control of their lives, confidence in who they are and greater peace of mind. Those things are so vital that those same people often tell us that the weight loss is just an added bonus. They no longer need to wait for their goal weight for their lives to begin, instead they have learned how to join their lives already in progress.

How can you enjoy the journey on your way towards your goal weight?

13 Comments In the order they were posted.

audrey said...

You can enjoy your new body and doing all the things you can do now! Take pride in your appearence and watch a new slimmer, sexy you appear!

Dorothy said...

The journey can be enjoyed by taking pride in learning that we are important to ourselves and others and the journey will help us not only get healthy emotionally and physically, but it will be a great example for anyone close to us. Of course, the compliments when others start to notice is great too, but watching our children learn healthy choices is the best reward I can ask for.

dora dry said...

I have just completed third article on free 4 day course! I already am feeling uplifted and very positive and confident. Lot said due to my beginning compulsion at age 15, and my quite elderly age now Dora

Wordravyn said...

Well said! How appropriate your thoughts are to my situation right now! Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

the greatest thing about diet and exercise that you get to live your life and do stuff u always wanted to do. you are no longer sitting on the couch binging every night, you are full of energy and your mind is open for new experiments and new discoveries. i never knew how much fun ive been wasting while i was eating. even to reward myself there are much better rewards than food, i spoil myself differently and way much healthier

marianne said...

some great insight here for sure. I am struggeling terrible with my eating out of emotions. I love how you said to re-parent yourself and this is a way to love yourself. I am going to focus on that this week and love myself as a parent should have. I grew up with very angry parents who lashed out all the time at each other and to me and I always walked on egg shells to try and not get caught in there cross fire. I learned how to stuff all my feelings and not express them for fear of getting them angry at me.

Renee said...

"... each pound lost represents a step towards a more evolved self." Those are some profound words....and those are words that I plan to whisper to myself, embrace daily, and embed in my spirit until I reach my goal. After reading this article, I realized how destructive I been over the past decade. The level of self-destruction has displayed itself as unfortunate incidents, disappointments, sad coincidences, missed opportunities. In reality, many of these things were orchestrated incidents created by my efforts to sabatoge every good thing in my life because of fear--the fear of success that awaits me on the other side of discovering that more "evolved self." Somewhere along my life's journey, I embraced and bought into those lies that said that I had no self-worth until I reached my ultimate weight loss goal....Now, in my struggle to become that evolved person who has dignity and self-worth--regardless of her size--I am discovering the unique presence, gifts, and worth of the woman that I ignored and silenced for all of these years and allowed others to join in my daily battering and beating. When I felt helpless and defeated, I turned to food to cover up all of that pain.... But, no more...I have a lot of catching up to do. It's a new day and I'm a few steps closer to my more evolved self.

esther said...

RENEE I AM INSPIRED BY YOUR POWER AND YOUR INSIGHT. I GET HOPE FROM WHAT YOU SHARED AND AM LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING TO THE SAME PLACE YOU ARE . I WANT TO SAY NO MORE TO THE ABUSE , DISREGUARD AND NEGLECT I HAVE PUT UPPON MYSELF. I AM WORTHY OF BEING GOOD TO MYSELF AND MAKING MY LIFE AS GOOD AS IT CAN BE. ME AND ONLY ME . I JUST HAVE THIS NAGGING VOICE IN MY HEAD THAT I HAVE TO IGNORE OR LEARN HOW TO SHUT IT UP WITHOUT FOOD . THIS IS MY HURDLE TO GET OVER AND I HOPE I DO IT WITH THE GRACE THAT IT SEEMS YOU HAVE DONE IT WITH .i AM GRATEFUL TO YOU FOR SHARING AND GRATEFUL FOR THIS PROGRAM.

francis said...

thank you Michelle for this and other articles !

plaw said...

How I am enjoying my journey is that for the first time I am acknowledging and facing my feelings and just accepting them for what they are. I am proudly doing this without connecting those feelings, good or bad with food like I always did in the past. It feels like I've been in the dark my whole life and all of a sudden the light has been turned on and I see things that I never saw before. I feel strong and empowered. My weight has taken a back seat and now I am at the forefront! For now, I am just enjoying getting to know me.

Rainna said...

Thank you for sending me your e-mails. They are full of inspiration I have still got along way to go but am making the first steps

andso said...

Wow! Especially about the goal orientation. Sex being about connection and sexuality.... I have thought a lot about why sex was so often so disappointing for me. I can have a climax any time I want. What I need from someone else is the connecting...hmm

HDHoney said...

I am so glad that I found this site. The holidays have been horrible for me with my bingeing every day on sugar and junk foods. Even though I get up every day and promise myself that I will eat good healthy foods, shortly after I start on bingeing and sometimes dont stop until I am physically ill. Over the past 2 years I have lost a lot of weight doing a low carb diet. I was within 12 pounds of my goal and then the cheating started and now I am back to being 37 pounds above my goal weight. I have got to stop this behavior now. It seems like a miracle that I found this site on the last day of the year. Sort of means that this is a new beginning for me. I have already ordered the book from Amazon and thinking of joining the program. I am a little leary to spend any more money on yet another weight loss program. This seems more like a program for learning to live, rather than just a weight loss program. I am planning on joining some of the discussion groups as well. I think that I am physically addicted to sugar and flour and that I need to just eliminate these products in my diet. One bite of them, ALWAYS leads to days or months of bingeing. Yesterday I bought a pack of cookies and sat here and ate the whole box and then took the package to the trash outside, so that my boyfriend would not see it when he came home from work. That was a real sign for me that I have a real problem...A problem with bingeing and a problem with hiding that fact and not getting any help. I hope that I can get some help here. Thanks for listening. I had only meant to write a few lines, but the words just kept coming. I need to get back to journaling and get my feelings out in black and white for me to see and work through.