Disheartened, but NOT Discouraged.

Must like Pac-man, I've hit some walls in the past week or two. And much like Pac-man as well, I've wanted to eat everything I come across. Now, I don't want this blog to become all about food and losing weight -- that's not what I'm about. I want this blog to be a place to document my journey, and to be open and honest with the people who read it and care to follow it. So I promise that I will sprinkle in lots of things for all of us, so nobody gets bored. :) 

Disheartened versus discouraged. The age old debate, amiright?

Yes, I know -- those two words mean essentially the same thing. But not really, when you break it down... To me, disheartened means that I'm disappointed, bummed, a little like "wa waaaa waaaaaaa" trumpet sound effect in my ear. Discouraged means that I'm thinking about quitting. And let me say this -- I was surprised on the scale last week when I weighed in, and I was highly disheartened. But did I think of quitting? Well, not completely -- I did try to tell myself that I shouldn't stay at my meeting. I was a little like a kindergartener who doesn't get her way in a game, she thinks of flipping the board and huffing off with a foot stomp. But I sat myself down in a chair, sent a few disheartened text messages to David and my mom, and then paid attention to the meeting. Did I feel a little deflated? Yes. (Wow, Mandy -- you're really on a "D" word kick today. If you love that letter so much, why don't you just marry someone whose name starts with it???? Oh, yeah....) But I knew that if I let myself get discouraged, and think about throwing in the towel, that I would be kicking myself completely. I've made a deal to myself (and to those of you who read this) that I won't quit. In the immortal words of Her Highness Miley Cyrus, "we can't stop, we won't stop." 

I have goals that are much bigger than myself. And I have to keep reminding myself this on a daily basis. Every decision that I make, good or bad, is affecting the life that I am choosing to live. And if I want to obtain these goals, I have to keep my eyes on them and charge ahead. And that is what I plan on doing, and ALSO must keep reminding myself of. :) I'm making healthy changes in my life. And if I step on the scale and it doesn't give me what I want, I can still feel good knowing that I am choosing to love and respect my body. Even if someone did, TOTALLY hypothetically, get a happy meal the other day because she was craving terrible fast food, she was respecting her body enough to keep track of what she was eating, and make the decision of that meal to satisfy her cravings instead of what she normally would have eaten. Like I said, completely hypothetical, of course. And also, have you seen how tiny the happy meal fries are?? In the long run, I'm sure it was better for this fictitious person, but dang, McDonald's. Way to hold out on a girl random example person. :P 

When I first started back with WW, I sat down and ran through a typical day for me food wise, and took stock of what I would have normally eaten and calculated out the points, compared to my current allowance on WW. And I was blown away. I was eating SO unhealthily. So bad. I shudder to think about it, because even though I still eat things that aren't great for me, I'm at least aware of it, and am minimizing it greatly. Being aware of what we are doing to our bodies is very powerful, and I'm slowly starting to notice things about my body that I didn't before. I'm hearing signals that it's putting out. I'm totally picking up what it's laying down, if you know what I'm saying. (That sounded WAY dirtier than it should have) The other day I had the strangest thing happen to me - it probably had never happened in all of my 32 years. I was super, super grumpy (no, don't kid yourself -- this part wasn't the new thing), and when I got home, all I wanted to do was lay down and watch TV, and wallow in my grumpiness. But instead, I decided to go for a bike ride. It popped into my brain and sounded perfect! :) So I hitched up the old bike and headed out... Now, downside to this super motivational story is the fact that my tire was dead and I rode like .08 miles down the road before I had to head back. But still - I was proud of myself for feeling that way, and for actually acting on it and not squashing it. That was a big thing for me. I'm sorry about the disappointing ending to the story... I obviously need to work on beefing up my motivational speeches before I take this tour on the road. 

So as weight-in approaches tonight, I'm trying to clear my mind and go in openly. Whatever happens, happens. I can't undo it now, so there is no point in getting myself in a tizzy about it. I will just step on, read the numbers, and keep on keepin' on. Because even Pacman had a job to do, right?