Taking it All Off: Reflections of A Loser

Been struggling this summer keeping on track, fighting my desire to eat foods I love with my desire to be healthy. Up until this summer, as I was losing, I just avoided those foods. I got to a point this summer where I was tired of avoiding them and just wanted to eat them. I realized quickly that because I avoided them while losing I never really taught myself how to incorporate them into my new healthy life style. So I started overeating them again like I was afraid I was never going to have them again. You can eat foods you love in moderation, I just needed to train myself in how to do that. The problem for me is not really the food, although some is definitely much better for you and should be eaten more often, but how much I eat of it. I am a habitual overeater. This journey has shown me how not to do that with the right foods, so now I have entered the part of the journey where I have learn to not overeat my favorite foods. I can’t say it’s been as easy a road as the last year, but I sure am learning a lot of things. I wanted to share some insight that I received today as I was climbing down a two-story ladder at work. There’s this task that needs to be done every so often up in the speaker bridge that I have recently been given the privilege of learning how to do. It involves climbing a two story aluminum ladder, mostly in the dark, bungee corded to the ceiling. I have had the honor of climbing this ladder 3 times this summer. Today I realized that the journey up and down that ladder is not unlike my current health journey. 1) The ladder must be taken to reach my destination. Whether it is climbing the ladder or descending it, I’m getting nowhere unless I use it. 2) No matter which direction I am going on that ladder, it’s a long way to get to my destination. Whether its up or down, it’s not easy. The ladder shakes and shimmies all the way up, but it’s the easy part compared to getting back on to get back down. All I know is that the best way to go is one rung at a time. Not looking down, not counting the rungs, just easy and steady, one rung at a time and your destination will be reached. I thought about how close this scenario is to weight loss. Getting to where I am was easy because I took it one rung at a time focused on the current rung. But after getting off the ladder, I’m faced with getting back on and going back down. I have to get back on, because the longer I wait, the longer I have to stay in the ceiling. Sometimes we chose to stay in the ceiling for years. But we weren’t meant to stay in the ceiling. We were meant to live to our fullest potential down on the ground. So to get back there, the ladder must be gotten back on. It’s hard, unsteady and unnerving, but each time you go down, it gets easier and easier. The learning process begins to take place. Once your feet are back in place, and you don’t look down, the destination will be reached, one rung at a time.