Friend of Julie: Hostage to Food

Are you searching for motivation to re-start your weight loss journey? Have you fallen off program and you can't get back on? Do you sometimes think about how all "this time" you could have been so much further on you journey if only you... STOP right here? Don't beat yourself up for what you could have or should have done—instead—choose to start again right now.

Dec. 2000: I was a hostage to food
June 2015: I choose not to be a hostage to food

If you've been off-program, jump back in the river this moment. Don't wait another day. 

If you feel like you can't get back on-program because you lack discipline or motivation, take a look around and you'll see this isn't true elsewhere in your life and it isn't true in this area either.  Let go of that inner critic who is judging your for not staying the course; that critic who is holding you hostage.

Trust yourself that you have the tools to see your weight loss journey through and right now make your weight journey your top priority.

When you wake up tomorrow morning, pat yourself on the back for having started today. Don't count the days you've been back in the river. Knowing the number of days that you are in the river only reminds you that you were off-program and makes you feel that you had failed. To be successful, we must focus on our successes—not our failures.

Sometimes we make mistakes in life. Instead of seeing this as a failure, see this as part of your journey. While your side-trip may or may not have been planned, you probably learned a few things along the way. You may even have more clarity as to why you need to choose to stay in the river. Don't let that clarity hold you hostage and prevent you from reaching your goal. Let go. Accept the lesson you learned, get back on program, and don't look back.

Get back to the basics: eating clean and exercise.

This may mean dropping what you're doing right now (or once you finish reading this post) to go to the grocery store. Planning ahead is critical to your success. Focus on proteins like steak, fish, chicken, and eggs. Make big meals and freeze some so you don't have to cook every night.

The weather is no longer an excuse to stay indoors, so get outside and exercise. If you have physical limitations, find something that you can manage and start moving at whatever level you're at. If you can get a friend to join you - even better. If not, grab your cell phone and call someone who is willing to talk as you walk. If you are just starting to exercise again, do as much as you can and be kind to yourself. Don't beat yourself up for what you no longer can do. Give yourself encouragement for what you are doing now.  Once again: success is contingent on planning ahead. Make a consistent plan to fit exercise into your life and stay the course.

Remember this isn't a race. You didn't gain your weight in a few months and for most it will take many months or even a few years to reach your goal size.

Don't compare your weight loss to that of others, as there are many variables as to why one person takes a year to lose weight and another takes a few years to lose the same amount. Do your best every day and you will reach your goal.

Celebrate your non-scale victories along the way. They come in many forms. A recent victory for me was choosing not to eat something "because I could get away with it." A few weeks ago I was at the register at Barnes and Noble at 7:30 pm and I hadn't had dinner yet. As the cashier rang up my books, it seemed as if all the little gold-foil wrapped candies were calling out to me. I pushed away the urge.

It used to be so easy to just grab a bar of some kind to "hold me over," but I never bought just one. I'd buy ate least two bars, eat them on my way home, and then convince myself to stop at a store for a pint of ice cream for dinner.

Those little bars never held me over, they held me hostage on an endless journey of never having enough sugar and always wanting more.

Eating those foods is what I used to do, but it's not what I choose to do today. Today I choose healthy over easy.

You have a choice too. You can choose to keep doing what you're doing or you can choose to change. You can make that change right here and now or you can wait another five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years.

This what choice is all about—you get to choose when to stop being a hostage to food.

How about choosing to stop right now?