Did you make any New Year’s resolutions this year? I didn’t. I resolved last year to never do that again. It puts too much pressure on a person to make New Year’s resolutions and stick to them. That’s why there are so many jokes about breaking them. So why bother?
I’m going to lose weight this year. That’s not a resolution. That’s a decision. It’s one that I made some time ago and I have managed it for the most part. I have lost some thirty pounds and they haven’t come back. OK a few of them have and I lost them again. I have thirty pounds to go. I’ll get there. It might not be this year, but I will get there. I have decided.
Every year people make New Year’s resolutions and break them. I think I know why. It’s because we make our resolutions without thinking too much about them. We say, I’m going to lose sixty pounds, by summer. Then we fail. Why? Because we set ourselves up for the failure. We set unrealistic goals, can’t achieve them and give up it’s good to make goals, but they should be achievable in some kind of time frame.
My decision to lose weight stemmed from the fact that I couldn’t stand for long periods of time without pain. I decided that I didn’t want to be in pain anymore when I stood for longer than five or ten minutes. So I started working on dropping the weight. I set a target weight and then set some interim targets. I wanted to be ten pounds lighter in three months. That’s an attainable goal. It took me longer to lose the thirty pounds that I’ve lost, but I didn’t let that bother me. I lost the weight over time by setting that same goal repeatedly until I lost that first ten pounds. Then I said I want to be another ten pounds lighter in another three months and did the same thing. Now I think that I need to look at my strategy and come up with another method.
That happens more often than we would like to think. What works one time may not work a second time. To that end, I have stepped up my activity level and am burning more calories than I did before I got more active. I still have a food budget for the day. I don’t have a diet. I have a food budget and I need to stick with it.
That is what I have learned in Weight Watchers. It isn’t a diet. It’s a budget. I’m not working on looking good. I’m working on being pain free and healthy. Clear cut goals is what you need to succeed in this game. Resolving to do something is not the same as deciding to do it. You can make a resolution without making a decision, but you need to make the decision that you may not even realize is a decision before you will succeed in achieving your goals. So decide what you want. Then make the decision to get it. You just might surprise yourself.
I am not one who is comfortable talking about myself but here goes. I enjoy writing, family history, and reading. I decided to do this blog because I wanted to try something new. I decided to make it a weekly blog because I wasn't sure that I could keep up with a daily one, and monthly seemed like I was writing a magazine. I think I did ok with my choices. You'll notice that there are not a lot of graphics on my site. That's because there are graphics plastered everywhere on the Internet and those sites sometimes take forever to load. This blog is a place where you can kick back, relax and be ready to be amused. At least I hope I willbamuse you. This blog is on a variety of subjects from my ficitional cat agency, the FFL, which is monthly, to instructional blogs to editorials, which are my opinions only. I admit that I don't know everything and could be wrong -- I frequently am. Now, stop reading about me and read what I have to say!
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