Circles

I get this thought often...."WHY?! Why can't I just eat all the delicious food I want and still lose weight?" Oh the dream right?! Hi my name is Staci and I have a food addiction, I should be in a support group for it. I love food. Like seriously you guys, I l-o-v-e food. The taste, the smell, the happiness I feel when I'm eating....healthy food, junk food it doesn't matter....I'm always happier when I'm eating. That is a dangerous mix because it leads to me eating to feel better. I have a hard time balancing things....I am either crazy hard core with following a plan or I just keep goofing up over and over in the week all while beating myself up about it which leads to me feel terrible which leads to more eating. See that? That awful cycle?!  I really need to work on that and figure out how to walk a balanced line...after all this is a lifestyle I'm learning here. I've been at this for 15 months, I've come a long way in that time...I've learned not to make the terrible choices all the time and that is a big deal....and 9 times out of 10 I drink water or coffee before I eat when I know I'm not really hungry.
Everyone keeps telling me I'm too hard on myself, and in a way I am but in other ways I'm not...because if I stop worrying about it even for one day I go overboard. The past 5 months I've been working on not worrying as much about the number on the scale and more about making sure I stick to my exercise routines and trying to make the best choices I can when it comes to eating. That is really hard for me because that number has been a ruler in my life for so long and some weeks I do good about it not bothering me and other weeks its all I can think about. I think my biggest fear is I will stop worrying about that number and wake up one morning 200lbs again. I don't want that life....I don't want the feeling of being overweight, the hatred I felt for myself and honestly the embarrassment I felt from it. Being overweight is not something I'm ok with for myself, it's not something I ever want to be again. Ever. But I also don't think I want that "perfect body" either....in my mind I thought oh if I can hit the 130's my butt will be higher and my legs won't have cellulite and my thighs won't touch and I'd have that dream toned stomach but I'm pretty sure that will happen by a number. I feel pretty damn great about how I look in clothes right now and even when I was a teenager I didn't have this confident with my body and I was between 125lbs-135lbs in that time frame. I think a lot of it comes back to me and my confidence in myself. When I think about it, I have felt better emotionally about me these past 15 months than I have my whole teen/adult life. When I lace up my running shoes and I hit the pavement...even if its only for 3 miles....I feel amazing and super proud of who I am while I'm out there.
I'm working really hard on being happy where I'm at.....that isn't easy for someone like me who tends to find negatives before positives but I'm trying and in the end that is something I keep coming back to...as long as I keep trying....I'm never failing.

Maybe this is the part in my journey where I have to overcome my fears and get my brain in the right gear so that I can reach that finish line of my weight loss. Maybe now is my time to be in the higher end of my healthy weight range and learn how to make mistakes but how to come back from them. Maybe this is the emotional part where I learn to think differently about me....to learn that the number isn't who I am.....its how I live that makes me who I am.

 "The Secret of being happy is accepting where you are in life and making the most out of it everyday." My journey isn't a perfect one and I'm never going to pretend that it is. I make more mistakes than I should but I'm human and the temptation out there is hard. This time will pass and I can either give up and never reach that dream or I can keep pushing forward even if I feel like I'm going in circles.....and when it comes down to it I'd rather go in circles than go backward.


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