Persistance Not Perfection

I had a FB memory pop up yesterday.

 

I’m due to celebrate my 39^th birthday next week and the FB memories of my 30^th birthday have also been surfacing.  I actually love seeing all my birthday celebration memories because you know how much I love my birthday.

My starting weight was 304.8 pounds.  My goal weight was 175 pounds and nine years ago I got down to 165, which was an all-time low.  I had officially lost 139.8 pounds and 46% of my body weight.  It felt great.  Look at the collar bones!

 

 

Fast forward nine years and I am currently 46 pounds over my goal weight.  What is absolutely worth celebrating is that in July of 2016, I was 88 pounds over goal.  There are still times that I try and rack my brain on how I let myself get 88 pounds over goal.  I swore I wasn’t going to gain the weight back.  I knew I would be able to keep it off forever.  I had safeguards in place after all.  Then…life changes.

What matters right now in this moment is that I am not still 88 pounds over goal, or a more terrifying thought, that I have not gained all the weight back.  What matters in this moment is that I realized I needed to take control of my weight gain and have a hefty pep talk (pun intended) with myself about what needed to change. 

The thing with weight gain is that it is depressing.  When you are losing weight everybody is celebrating your accomplishments and giving you compliments.  When you are gaining weight, all of that stops.  Nobody really wants to give you any honest feedback about your weight gain.  Really what could they say to me?  I was already my own worst critic.  Feeling depressed about it just made eating those feelings 10x easier.  It is a vicious cycle.

Instead, of looking at the past, I chose to look at today. I have lost 83.8 pounds over the last nine years.  That is definitely a cause for a celebration.  I’m always down for a party!

We never know what life will deliver.  The ups, downs, and sideways can be the hardest to navigate.  It is exhausting trying to be perfect all the time.  Instead, I’ll keep working on persistence.