A New Committment

Well...even with the best intentions I found myself MIA from my weight loss goals through the holidays. I don't know why but even though I know how to cook healthy and make recipes using the correct points, I still seemed to continue to reach for those holiday cookies. As a result of that I found myself weighing in at my January meeting and being the SAME weight I was when I originally joined Weight Watchers a year ago. "WOW," I thought...that's failure in a big, BIG way! As a result of that I took about a month and a half and although I continued to go to meetings, I didn't track nor did was I consciously involved in achieving my goals. And then it just so happened that in one of our recent meethings we started to talk about maintenance. The ADD side of my brain thought, "Oh, I'm not at my goal yet so why should I listen to this?" Luckily, I did manage to clue in and learned a valuable lesson and another way to look at things. See...even though in January I found myself at the same weight I was when I joined (Nov. 2008--yes, I had lost about 16+ pounds but, sadly, managed to find them again) there was a bright side to what I did. I had maintained my weight for an entire year. I did not go up nor did I go down (again, I did go down but went up again) and that was something to be celebrated? Why celebrate being at the same weight a year later? Because in previous years I didn't maintain but gained, usually about 5-10 pounds. So, this year even though my collective weight loss was a big fat goose egg, I really had something to celebrate! I left that meeting with a new outlook on my weight loss journey and that is to celebrate even the little things AND to cut myself some slack. I recently went through a HUGE change in the last year: new job for the husband which resulted in a move from a place and family I've lived near my whole life. Add to that the stress of selling a house in a down market, living in a townhouse the size of a mousehole with two kids, adjusting to CONSTANT snow and then purchasing and moving yet again to our "forever" NY house and I've had A LOT going on. So, something that I had moped about for a month and a half was something I should have celebrated! Never, ever had I gone into the new year being the same weight I was the previous year! BRAVO to me! After that meeting I become more committed to my goals and to celebrating even the littlest things along the way!