Rediscovering the skinny b*…

Strict diet regimes that were doomed to failure. Crazy exercise programs that would never last. Shakes, and bars, and calorie counting, and low carbs, and high carbs, and zero carbs, and grapefruit and lemon water, and this celebrity diet and that celebrity diet and this program followed by that program. I tried heaps of them.

And I failed them all.

But wait, I didn’t fail them… The reality is, they failed me. You see, no matter what program I tried, no matter what system, not one was giving me what I really needed. They weren’t reeducating me, weren’t reintroducing me to eating properly, cooking properly, exercising wisely, etc. They weren’t introducing a healthy lifestyle that would stick, they were offering instead the quick fix weight loss.

You see, you can only drink shakes for so long. You can only deny yourself so many times. You can only exercise so much before you start to burn out.  
 
Any extreme diet is doomed to fail because it’s not a sustainable lifestyle. Sure, the results are quick and impressive, but what happens when you go back to real life? You haven’t learned how to eat for real living, you’ve only learned how to diet “successfully” and when the diet is over, the weight comes back, usually in ever-increasing numbers.

Then this revolutionary thought occurred to me.

I know everything I need to know in order to lose weight and be healthy. Heck, most of us do. Unless we’ve struggled with weight all our lives, most of us can recall a time when we were at a healthy, feel-good weight.

I don’t need fad diets, special shakes, appetite suppressants and crazy-insane, killer exercise programs. I need one thing and one thing only – my mind.

Deep in the dark recesses of my little brain was a memory – it was a memory of myself as a trim, healthy, fit, active woman; a woman who didn’t use anyone else’s program to stay in shape but who simply lived a lifestyle that kept her wearing the same size year after year, even after Christmas, even after babies.

That was the woman I needed to be. And that is where my journey of weight loss has finally brought me.

~ by wheresroxy on April 9, 2008.