Making today THE day everything changed.....

I had quite a realization today.
It has come at some expense...mostly of time and energy.
My house is clean.
This seems a small thing..
But for years..YEARS...I have struggled to clean my house.
I wafted around on a never ending tide of clutter.
I would get one room clean..
then another would fall apart.
well...a while back I decided I couldn't live like this anymore.
And I got it clean.
I won't go into all the details, but my house is entirely organized and clean from baseboards to cupboards...from closets to bookshelves.
What changed?
I have the same number of kids, and a husband, and a dog.
I changed.
I decided.
And I did it.
I have talked many times about how something flipped or switched or snapped inside of me On May 4th, 2009.
For the first two years, I went on the supposition that it was the sudden realization that I was fat that caused the big change. That my brain snapped to and from then on out I just knew what I had to do...
That it was some mystical outside force that propelled me...and that kept me going UNTIL...

Until I went back to Michigan.
I had a crappy childhood.  I had a growing fear inside of me...a fear of being vulnerable.
A Fear I allowed to derail me till a few months ago.
BUT  During that year following that trip back home, Whenever I tried to get on track..(mostly by hanging on for dear life by continuuing to exercise and trying to count calories or fighting the urge to binge away the knot in my stomach)...I kept losing. I got down to 148 lbs.  Then my fear began to make me lose sleep.  Then I began to have more bad days than good days.
And then I got to the point where I thought..."hey, I don't look bad...I'll just keep exercising till I feel like climbing back on that losing weight wagon'.....

But here's the thing.
I didn't feel like climbing back on...
Whatever impetus I had...being morbidly obese, being unable to breathe...Well, those were gone.
I was no longer ashamed of myself.
I no longer hate myself.
I continued to eat a little too much and exercise...
I allowed my fear and my apathy to keep me away from the person I truly want to be.
Which brings me to where I am now...currently 166 lbs.
(Down one pound so far since I began DOING again...remember one pound at a time...)
Now.
I had run away from the scale for over a year...last year about this time I was 156.
It's been a slow steady creep
(I noticed by the way I looked and the way my clothing fit, but did nothing to stop it...as I was still waiting for that magical moment to happen).
But In the last two weeks I have discovered something very, very, very important.
There is no magical moment.
And this is not about the weight.
It's about deciding who you want to be.
The day I put down that latte and started walking...
That wasn't an outside switch.
I pulled that puppy.
At the time, I was too disempowered to realize it was ME.
It was MY decision.
I thought some other, mystical force propelled me.
When in reality....
DOING BEGETS BEING.
I began doing what would get me better...
and by DOING I BECAME.
I became healthy.
I became empowered.
I became the person who tries  new things.
Not because I was not afraid.
But because I felt the uncertainty.
I felt the fear.
I felt the crushing reality of all my past failures.
and I
DID IT ANYWAYS.
So last week I began DOING again.
Not perfectly.
imperfectly.
But counting my calories.
Exercising.
Because I know WHO I WANT TO BE.
You can make TODAY the day you changed everything.
You can be who you want to be.
By flipping the switch inside you..
from wisher to doer.
from failure to winner.
simply by choosing to.
Chris out.