Carnival Games

As anyone who's ever struggle with any amount of significant weight loss can tell you... the biggest key, and hardest is really to simply keep going.

I started back at serious walking yesterday and I've done a mile each day. I was particularly pleased with myself yesterday because it was going to be my first day back and when it was time to walk, it was raining. How easy would it have been to say, oh well, what's one more day? The fact that I went out there and walked the entire mile, I'm so proud of. I did good and I'm learning that its okay to feel pride in yourself when you've done a good job and furthermore, I'm learning how truly wonderful that feels.

Today, my youngest wanted to walk with me, he's 17 to be clear, but still my youngest, and not far down the road I said to him, my legs hurt, we may not do the whole mile today. The second I said it, I knew I was looking for him to give me permission not to walk, and internally I slapped myself. Yes, my legs did hurt, and I wanted to say, if I make it up the hill, that will at least be something. Which was true, it would have been and still something to be proud of, but if I only did that much because it was all I could do, then that's one thing, but it wasn't. I was copping out.

Anytime you make a good choice for yourself, life, satan, fate, something, will slap you back and tempt you to stop. There is some force at work within this world, and you can call it whatever makes you comfortable, but it doesn't want to see you succeed at anything. It wants to hold you at mediocre, or worse, when you are capable of so much more! When we resist the path of 'good enough'. When we push through the temptation and make the good choice, despite how we feel about it, that's amazing...in that moment, you're amazing.

So I put the decision about the full mile out of my mind and focused on getting up that hill and once
I was on the top and turned around to come back down, I told myself I'd just done the hardest part, you're doing the rest of the mile... and I did :) And now I can really feel proud of my choices and of the exercise I gave my body and of my ability to dig deep and do it anyway. I could have come home and my family would have said "good job." I post on FB and twitter when I walk and I got a few woo hoos yesterday, would have done the same today, but Iwould have known I didn't deserve them. When you do your best and people say job well done, it touches something deep inside that rarely gets activated within us and when that is active, its like a power boost and we can do remarkable things. It's worth doing your best, don't cop out, don't take the path of the least you can do. Be amazing. Be remarkable.

Walking is good for me. It improves my health, my stamina, builds muscle and aids in my weight loss efforts. Plus its an easy bottle of water if I just sip as I walk. It's a good choice for me and my life and it pushes me to make more good choices because I worked hard for that one, I don't want it to be for nothing!

I believe that anytime you can make a good choice for yourself and recognize it for that, you've just raised the stakes. It's like playing one of those silly carnival games where you've won the teeny prize, but now they want you to keep playing to win the bigger one and the one you really want is that ginormous polar bear with the big eyes. It's hard to walk away once you have twenty bucks invested in that bear. Weight loss is much the same if you can shift your perspective a bit. Make a good choice, just one. After you've done that and you feel how good it is to make that choice, do you really want to walk away now, or do you want to make another good choice and go for the bigger stuffed animal... or in this case... the smaller body? Who  knows, in the end, you just might win. ;-)