WEIGHT LOSS IS EASY!

Sure it is! 

The theory is quite simple:”Consume fewer calories each day than you burn and you will lose weight.”

Straightforward.

Simple.

Easy!

There!  What problem would you like me to solve now?? :-)

Ok, I know.  The theory is simple.   

The rules of weight loss are a lot like the rules to the game of chess.  Thirty minutes will get you the basics of chess, but it can take a lifetime to master the game.

And losing weight is no game! 

And for me anyway, it has taken all of my 51 years to begin to get the application of what it takes to lose and keep off the weight.

I learn a little each day.   

Somewhere along the line of this current reduced eating phase of my life I’ve emotionally accepted that I am no longer dieting.

 I will never “diet” again.

 Ever.

Period, paragraph, explanation point!

The way I am eating now is now the way I live, literally.

My pastor recently showed me how I used to walk up and down stairs.  If he wasn’t so serious about it I would have thought he was kidding around.  He had it down pat. The way I slowly came down the stairs in pain with each step, balancing precariously and holding on to the railing for support, and completely out of breath was the way I was.   

He told me he seriously wondered when he’d be called upon to conduct my funeral.  He figured it would be sooner rather than later. 

He was right.

I didn’t know how bad I felt until I started feeling better!

My mom died of breast/lung/brain cancer at the age of 70.

My dad died of lung cancer at the age of 57.

My sister died of breast cancer at the age of 51.

I had given up trying to lose weight.  Why go to all the hassle of another failed diet when cancer’s just around the next bend waiting for me anyway?

Trouble was, what life I did have left, was getting so miserable with the strain of morbid obesity, I could no longer afford to wait for cancer! 

I was already miserable enough!

  

(New readers will want to visit my permanent page marked “How Did I Get Here??” for that part of my story.)

Rereading this, I can imagine what you are thinking.  I was pretty hopeless, depressed and trying to commit suicide…one spoonful at a time.

Yep.

If you’ve ever been exposed to any 12 step program they call that:”Stinking Thinking”. And I had a seemingly incurable dose of it.

People loved me and prayed for me…that is all I can attribute to what has begun turning my life around.  I had given up…but my wife; family, friends and my doctor had not…thank God! 

Yes! Let’s not forget God who instills love, who is love, who looked at my miserable sinfully obese life and loved me through these people!  They loved me when I no longer much loved or cared for myself any longer.

Sighhhhhh.

Surprised by love.

So now I choose to live. 

I will never “diet” again and I will fight cancer “tooth and toenail “if it ever comes. 

“IF” not when!

To that end (no pun intended!), I had a colonoscopy performed this morning as a preventative measure because of my family history of cancer.

 Yes it is a hassle.

 I also had to undergo the additional indignity of six enemas this morning as well. 

They (and you know who you are!) are right; I really am “full of it!”

The results?  A-OK!

I’ve chosen to have a lot of life in my days, no matter how long I live.

Eating well and taking care of me is now part of the new plan.

So these heavy thoughts rattle around inside my brain, but they do now urge me toward lighter living.

I can live with that.