Singing for a smaller me

Twenty-six days from now I will be thirty years old. Thirty on thirty, right? Heh. Yeah, cheesy, I know. Whatever.

For a long time that was my magical number. I'll have my weight under control by the time I'm thirty - that was my mantra. So why the heck am I here? more than a hundred pounds over weight? twenty-six freaking days from my magical number? What the heck happened?

I can't answer those questions any better today than I could yesterday, or the day before that. All I know is I'm doing my best to take that weight off and keep it off. However, there's this part of me that wants the weight gone NOW. This part of me that wants to keep on exercising all day long until the pounds disappear. Don't get me wrong, I've no expectation that the magic weight loss fairy materialize, zap me, and suddenly I'm skinny. The days of wishing my weight away are long gone.

No, I know the key to losing this weight is moderation in both my diet and exercise.

Still, I'm scared. I'm so very scard of losing my motivation. How many times have I gone down this road - lost weight only to gain it back plus more? What happens when I lose my initial momentum? What happens when the floor drops out from under me and I backslide? What happens if I gain weight? I feel more motivated to lose weight than I ever have, am I just fooling myself? There are so many unanswered questions.

Starting back down this path, I've spent so much more time preparing and analyzing my thoughts than I have before. I feel better prepared than I've ever been - that the necessary tools to keep myself on track are all there. But there's this little part of my brain always going "what if, what if, what if . . ."

Fighting back against the "what if's" and the "it's not fair's" is a daily part of this journey. I'm so used to failure that I have a hard time believing in the success.

My 30 Day Workout Challenge Buddy Katherine hasn't worked out in a couple of days. When I check in with her after my workouts she assures me she will workout, but is having a hard time getting back on the wagon after taking a number of days off. She texts me today "I am totally feeling like a big fat loser" and it hits home because I've felt that way so many times. Now, though, I think I've finally hammered it into my thick skull that I'm not a loser, I just have to start back up again. Taking a couple of days off isn't the end of the world. Here, let me repeat that again: taking a couple of days off is NOT the end of the world.

Is that the big secret? Is that what I've been missing all this time? Who knows.

All I know is I'm gonna keep on plugging along, even if most days I hate waking up at 5:30 a.m., stealthily grabbing my workout clothes and heading into the family room to choose yet another workout DVD, even if I hate stepping on the scale and still seeing my weight in the 280s. I'm feeling better than I have in a while and I don't want that feeling to go away.