The First Day I Decided to Live Again

By , SparkPeople Blogger
Today 
 
I reach
Through beams of dusty light
Falling to the earth
Through all of their prisms and geometry
Past the wind that dances on my skin...
And I want to know
Am I the only one who sees it?
Here, right now?
In this frozen moment of time?
There is something so mystical about the ordinary.
How could I have missed it yesterday?
 
The ordinary, that’s the beginning of change. 
 
Bedridden at 460 pounds, I had become very complacent. After all, there was nothing I could do, I thought.  Getting out of bed and rejoining the world seemed to be an immense journey that would take years and willpower that I just didn’t have.  I got tired and depressed just thinking about trying to get out of my situation.
 
The day I decided to live was not some miraculous moment in time.  It was a “Why the heck not try this since I’ve tried everything else” kind of moment.  Amazingly enough, the tips from Dr. Oz’s book, YOU on a Diet and SparkPeople taught me to take things slowly and work with my body instead of against it.
 
I had to learn to take things slowly, work smarter, not harder, and change up my life to include more than food.  This was crucial!  My days consisted of staying in bed eating and doing anything I could from there.  That’s a small world.  The chronic pain didn’t help.  Somehow I had to reach beyond that and find friends and support, which I found on SparkPeople.  This gave me courage to reach out in the real world.
 
Thus that day, I realized that I had to replace my ordinary life with something different.  It didn’t need to change with a bang, it just had to change, and so it did with the throwing upward of my hands and saying “Why not, I’ve tried everything else, what have I got to lose?”  With those changes comes empty space.  What do you do with the time you would have been pleasantly eating or sitting?  Find pleasant alternatives, discover or invent yourself.
 
Somehow this half-hearted throwing up of the hands effort took a turn.  The first few weeks and things I tried yielded results for a change.  Then I read and studied SparkPeople writings and YOU on a Diet like a college student would their classroom texts.  I wanted to do everything right.  This, in my opinion, was the last shot I was taking at losing weight.
 
Never stop taking last shots, I haven’t.  I’m still in the trenches fighting the good fight with you.  Remember to fill your life, not your stomach.  If that isn’t easy at this time, work on it any way you can.  That will be a saving grace. 
 
To date, I’ve lost 153 pounds I take it day by day.  This has taught me patience and has even taught me to slow down and think on a day-by-day, meal-by-meal basis.  I feel for the first time in life like I am searching and the journey is the best part.  The main thing I’m trying to find now isn’t weight loss.  I honestly think it’s something more fulfilling.  Weight loss is a major part of the journey.  It all started with a half-hearted “Why not?”  It’s that I took that “Why not” and did something that made all the difference.
 
Don’t wait for fireworks, perfection, the right day, or anything else.  Just start making better choices now, because, well… Why not?
 
What’s holding you back from making better choices today?