Remember why you're doing what you're doing

Ever get on a roll, driving home from work or whatever, and when you get there, you wonder how it happened?  That always freaks me out!  It makes me wonder how many stoplights I actually ran and people I cut off.  Yikes!

And although, I assume many of you would be perfectly content to throw on a pair of pants one day and have them fall off with no actually memory of how you lost all that weight in the first place, I'm pretty sure few of you are going to be that lucky.

That being said, I've been wondering how many of us get into the groove of "I've got to lose weight" without really assessing whether or not you really do.

Sure, we talk about health reasons for managing weight -- why a person would think that taking "just one" diabetes pill a day is a more reasonable solution to manage their blood sugar than losing  15 pounds and taking no pills -- I don't know.

Health considerations aside -- most of the reasoning I hear for weight management is aesthetically driven.  And again, I'm fine with "how we look" being the reason we set out on this kind of journey.

But....

What if we're just ASSUMING we need to lose weight?

What if we're always going to be  5 pounds away from happy?

What if we never learn that losing weight can make life easier in many ways but it won't solve the problems?

For example:  in the "losing the 15 pounds so you can go off your diabetes medication" -- it isn't the weight loss that drove those results -- it altering the behaviors that caused you to gain the weight in the first place.

And my point is this:  If you're struggling with practicing a more restrained and mindful eating style...if you're struggling with increasing your activity level...if you're making the changes you need to make but it's hard and you're not seeing the weight fall off like you'd like it to....

Don't give up.  Be happy now -- not 5 pounds from now.  Know that as you're working through this process, you are making yourself healthier and more fit.  The weight loss will come but the increased health is here right now.  And perhaps that can be enough....for right now.