a healthy mindset

I have spent a lot of time since January 1 thinking about my feelings about food and exercise.  Jon and I planned to focus on a lifestyle that includes healthy food choices and activities, and even though it was delayed for a week because we were both battling the aftermath of sinus infections, I have been thinking about it nonetheless.  I have started diets and exercise programs.  I have failed at Slim-Fast, Weight Watchers, diet pills, physician-assisted weight loss, and sparkpeople.  I have lost weight with these programs, of course, but I can't ever maintain that weight loss.  It's like my body wants to be fat.  But that's not the way it works and I do know that.

In the past, if I had come across a journal topic that said "Food Is..."  Here's what I would have written:
Food is: comfort, entertainment, happiness, pleasure, love, company, social, and the reason to live.

But that's the root of my problem.  I know that now.  Food can't be those things.  And if it is, you will most certainly have a problem.  The mindset I'm trying to focus on now is "Food is fuel."  It is what my body needs to function correctly.  It is what I need to consume to stay healthy and keep moving.  Food is fuel.  Food is not love or comfort.  Food is not something to do when I am bored.  Food is something to do deliberately and carefully.  It is to be savored and enjoyed, not picked up and eaten without much thought while watching TV or surfing the Internet.  This mindset has to change before real lifestyle change can begin.

So that's what I've been working on lately.  Changing my mindset.  Is that second piece of chocolate cake worth diabetes?  A small piece won't hurt, as long as I have been making healthy choices otherwise.  But a large piece, or a second piece - that's where we run into problems.  I want people to look at me a year from now and say "I can't believe you lost that much weight."  Not because I want to lose weight, but because I want to be healthy.