Destination Discipline

If chocolate is the color of temptation, color me chocolate. Chocolate ice cream, chocolate krinkle cookies, Godiva chocolate truffles. If my children were chocolate, I’d eat them. Considering all the chocolate I ate during my pregnancies, it’s amazing they aren’t. Over the holidays I had difficulty saying no to all of the goodies in the office. I did really well at first. People would offer me cookies and I would take 4, tuck them in my lunch box and take them home to my snack deprived family. (they constantly tell me we don’t have enough snacks in the house and this is my way to reward them—though for what I’m not sure.) Then one day, a beautiful Christmas Tree cookie asked to be mine, all mine, and I ate one. Then three. It was not a national tragedy, but close. Cookies are one of my trigger foods. Once I start eating them it’s all over. But I didn’t eat the chocolate. Instead, I began collecting it and tucking it away in my desk drawer. Every time I saw a goodie box, I grabbed a piece. I reasoned that I might *need* it for a rainy day. There is now a veritable gold mine of chocolate in my desk at work.

People react to my weight loss like I’m an enigma. To me, the person who has 100+ pounds to lose and the person who has 20 pounds to lose are no different. The same principals apply. Eat less, move more. Everyone knows if you eat less and move more you will lose weight. But permanent change requires a permanent change in your mindset. This is probably the biggest hurdle anyone with a significant amount of weight to lose faces. Most people look at changing their diet as synonymous with Chinese Water Torture. You can survive it, but why would you want to endure it? The simple answer is that you just have to want it bad enough. Yes,I know change is never easy.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. For some people, simply cutting out one dessert a day and starting an exercise program is a wonderful beginning. My first step was not small but that was intentional. I was so sick of my lifestyle that I knew I needed to make a big change. Several months into my journey I read that it is not wise to cut sugar out of your diet all at once. In fact, the doctor who wrote that book said anyone who cuts the sugar out all at once will fail. Oops. But cutting the sugar helped cut my appetite and I was able to relearn how to eat. I remember drinking milk and realizing it was sweet. Who’d a thunk it? Suddenly eating fruit and drinking milk was wonderful. I’m not usually crazy about salads but I fell in love with stir fried vegetables. So basically, my love affair with food continued but I learned to eat the kinds that didn’t clog my arteries.

My biggest challenge was exercise. I have always hated to exercise. So when I resolved to start walking it was pure torture. I will never forget my first trip around the block. I could barely breathe. It was excrutiating. But I decided not to focus on the pain of walking but rather on the beauty around me. I took my children and passed the time by talking about our day. I enjoyed the bright sunshine and fresh air. At first I could only walk about 15 minutes but slowly I built up my endurance and was able to move for 30 and then 45 minutes. I made it a goal to walk every day and I really came to look forward to those walks. That was “me” time and nothing took precident over it. Today I enjoy exercise. It is the best part of my day. I love how I feel when I get my heart rate up. I feel like I can fly. Even on those days when I’m tired I try to push through because I know I will feel better when it is over.

I also had an accountability partner. When the going got tough I would call her and she would talk me down off the ledge. What a blessing she was! Becky will never really know the important part she played in my transformation. Good friends are an invaluable part of permanent change. 5 months into my journey a friend at work wanted to help celebrate my birthday. He brought in a sugar free angel food cake covered with berries. I had to cry. His unwavering support made me feel like I could do anything.

The biggest thing I have learned during my journey is that when I fail, I have to forgive myself. I know I’m going to have bad days. I’m going to eat things I shouldn’t and over indulge. I’m going to skip a workout. Life happens! But that doesn’t mean my life is over. One bad choice does not necessitate another. Every day is a new day–a new opportunity–ripe with possibility.

Everyone must choose how they want to live their life. I didn’t want to carry around that extra weight for the rest of my life and then I took that first step. You can too!

Each day I wake up I can’t believe how amazing my life is. I have a great job with an amazing boss, three beautiful and healthy children, a spouse who consents to live with me even though we both know I’m crazy, and a body I would kill for. Let me rephrase that, I did kill for it. Hello, my name is Margaret and I am guilty of murdering the old me.

That is me on the right with my brother and sister back in the Spring of 2010. When my sister posted this picture on the internet I died a small death. I was humiliated. This picture forced me to face a truth about myself I was unwilling to acknowledge. I was morbidly obese. 310 pounds to be exact.

Have you ever needed something so badly that you let it take complete control of your life? And even though you knew it was ruining you, you still couldn’t stop? I hope you don’t know how that feels because it is miserable. There are many cliches I could insert at this point but I won’t. I’ll only say that moving was difficult at best. I used my children to fetch things for me because it was so hard to get up. I accepted my life because I knew I couldn’t change. I knew I was wholly addicted to food and I could not wrap my mind around living without the foods I loved. I used to say life wasn’t worth living without {insert specific food item}. And that’s just the way it was.

And then one day someone called me out. They decided not to pretend I wasn’t heavy. They told me I was less than a person because of my weight. And it hurt. A lot. And I was very angry. I was angry at the person but I was also angry at me. I knew that even though I ate everything I wanted I was still empty inside. Food did not fill the void. It only left me wanting more. So I decided to try to lose weight. I knew I lacked discipline so I prayed that God would teach me how to discipline myself. I wanted to change the way I lived my life–not just how I ate–though that is where I started. I embarked on the impossible journey never imagining I would succeed but knowing I had to try.

How do you face your worst enemy when your worst enemy is yourself? I know someone who likes to say that fat people should just stop eating. It’s so easy, right? Well that person had to live with me for the first 30 days I vowed to stop eating sugar. I went through tremendous withdrawals for 2 weeks and was completely miserable. Oh, and I also gave up eating fast food and high fat food at the same time. That was fun. I remember sitting in my cube at work crying because I refused to allow myself a homemade chocolate chip cookie one of my co-workers brought in. It seems silly, doesn’t it? Crying over cookies. But that’s how serious it was and still is. Oh, did I forget to mention that I’m still addicted to food and always will be? Food is my drug of choice.

But I made a decision not to give up. I realized my behavior was sin and made a conscious decision not to sin with my body any longer. I put a verse up in my kitchen over the sink and memorized it.

Romans 6:12-14. “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin as intruments of wickedness but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master because you are not under law but under grace.”

I wanted to be set free, but being free meant dying to the old me. The good news is, God did set me free. This is me today.

To date I have lost 135 pounds. I didn’t go on a diet. I changed my life.

This blog is about my journey to better health. I still struggle to maintain the weight I have lost and I continue to fight my addiction to food. But even on my worst days, when I cave in and eat things I know are bad for me, I know what I knew when I began; food will never fill the void. It will never make me happy. The only difference between me now and me then is this simple fact, I no longer believe the lie that losing weight is impossible. I no longer believe the lie that I cannot fight my flesh.

My name is Margaret and I am a food addict redeemed by the grace of God.