Weight Loss Journal--Reality Check

January 25, 2015

Weight Loss Journal--Reality Check

Before I can move forward, I face up to a few hard truths.  Sometimes not gaining back the weight you have already lost is a win.  Sometimes you have to address the underlying reasons for weight gain before you can lose weight.

Defining normal

A new normal.  We talk a lot about things getting back to normal, meaning that we want thing to go back to the way they were before___________.  Everyone has to fill in their own blank because we aren't all rooted out of our normal bed by the same thing.  But for argument's sake, I'll list of few of the things that create chaos in our lives.

The List

• divorce
• holidays
• visiting family or friends
• a visit from your family or friends
• death of a friend or loved one
• catastrophic event (fire, hurricane, tornado, blizzard, tsunami, etc)
• car wreck
• broken limb
• being diagnosed with a health condition or disease
• pregnancy
• moving
• public embarrassment
• failed diet
• losing weight
• birth of a baby
• marriage
• living with a new roommate
• winning the lottery (don't we wish)
• becoming a grandparent, for the first or the twenty-first time
• having the best barbecued ribs that you have ever tasted
• graduation--from high school, college, or trade school
• starting a new job
• being fired from an old job
• retiring

The point to all this

I am sure that there are other events that could be added to the list.  But that's not the point.  The point is, when you experience the event--i e go home for the holidays and face your family who drives you crazy--going home doesn't take you back to where you were when you left for the visit.  No, whether you realize it at moment or not, going home or "back to normal" means that you have create a  new normal.  It may look and feel somewhat like the old normal, but it is not nor will it ever be.  Which is not such a bad thing, if you really think about it.  Redefining our normal is what helps us (humans) to to evolve.  Each tiny change adds a new fact to our normal self and gives us a chance to change the trajectory of our future.

I guess that is a long-winded way to say, if you don't like where you are, then get out and experience life and make yourself a new normal. It seems that it would be beneficial to apply yourself to the positive ones that you (in theory) can control, pray that the ones that not in your control don't swamp your boat, and you don't get more than your fair share of the negatives.

My new normal

Nothing to do but grin and bear it!

As if 1-13-15 new normal is living with a fatty liver, morbid obesity, moderate rheumatoid arthritis, regular old getting old arthritis, fibromyalgia, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, sever Vitamin D deficiency, and being 59 instead of 58. All of these conditions (except for the morbid obesity)  were diagnosed with the last ten month!  Even though I may have lived with them for years, not knowing about them created a normal in which I believed I had no major health problems except for my weight.

No matter how much I would like for my life to get back to normal, it is never going to happen.