Thinking Thin: Commitment

I had the strangest feeling last week, as circumstances swirled around me like a tornado, and I felt sad and depressed and stressed and never enough…I didn’t want to eat.

This is a big deal, as I’m sure any of you who eat your emotions can attest to. Being down and out usually leads to feeling better with food. Chocolate or cheese, specifically.

But since eating whatever I wanted wasn’t an option, I didn’t do it. In fact, I used exercise as my “escape” instead.

I know for some people this may be a “duh” moment, but for any of you like me…I WORKED OUT INSTEAD OF EATING. For real.

So how is this possible? Has hell frozen over?  I’m noticing that I’m hardly ever tempted by bad food (it helps to rarely eat out) and I’m not having a big struggle sticking to my eating plan.

Why wasn’t it an option for me to eat bad, even when I was beyond stressed and went into survival mode for most everything else in life?  Why didn’t I do what I always do in the same situation?

Commitment. The line of commitment was drawn in the sand, I stepped over to the other side, and I now reside there in that place.  The no excuses, full intention, do-those-jumping-jacks-even-when-I-want-to-die, place. It’s not an option to eat bad, it’s not an option to not work out.

I got up uber early on Easter Sunday to exercise before church/family/egg hunting, for pete’s sake.

The difference between unsuccessful attempts at losing weight, and successful ones, is commitment NOT will power. Saying I’ll do my best, saying I’ll try really hard, saying I hope to succeed, those are all fine and dandy.  But they are all simply ways of not doing it.  You either do it, or you don’t.  You commit, or you don’t.

I’m amazed at the woman I can see emerging out of all this…someone I knew was there all along, but who has not seen the light of day before.  A woman who knows her worth, a mom who knows she deserves this, it’s all so new.

I know I will have days where I’m having a harder time remembering the commitment, or maybe even where I fall off the wagon completely.  Commitment does take re-commitment sometimes…how many times have you had struggles in your marriage or relationship and had to re-commit in your heart?  It takes tending to, no doubt about it.  But having the bar set so much higher means those “bad” days still won’t affect the over all success.  I truly believe this. What do you think?