I Can Barely See the PNP Wagon!
I was going to blog about vacation season but was so moved today by a few of the PNP'ers that I am writing about falling off the wagon and getting your butt back on it. When you land hard on your head sometimes it takes you a little bit to "come to" and realize there is a faint trail of dust in front of you where the weightloss wagon is just plugging along without you.
One of the toughest things about this journey is that there is just no end. I don't care who you are, when you are trying to lose weight you are kidding yourself if you think when you reach goa that it's all over. This is a lifelong journey. What you do on it is what you do when you reach your goal. You might be able to relax a little but you certainly can't go back to what landed you in fatland to begin with.
So, you are sittng on your cushy-tushy on the dirt road watching the wagon drive off without you. You decide to have a donut or two while sitting there because you know you need to carb up if you are going to catch the gang! LOL. As you eat those donuts you start thinking silly things like I need to get "motivated" to get back on. Uhhh...did I just hear us stalling our grand return to working hard to achieve our goals? Ya'll none of us need motivation to lose weight. We all have a darn good vision in our head of what we want to look and feel like. We all have clothes we want to wear, activities we want to enjoy, men we want to impress, vacations at the beach, and people we would like to "flaunt it" in front of....right? That's motivation. We got that.
What we don't have is a plan and habits that are ALWAYS with us. We all know to pack coolers, plan ahead, enjoy the party and not just the food, yada, yada, yada...what we forget about is that each time we slip up and don't recover we slowly turn into our old selves. First goes the journaling because we don't want to see in black and white what we are doing, Next, we skip meetings, weigh-ins, or checking on our communities/partners because they will tell us what we are doing or we feel we will let them down. Finally, we look up a week or so later, feel horrible, and then ponder where to start. You know where...the next meal. It's always the next meal. A bad breakfast doesn't excuse a bad dinner; a bad three days doesn't mean start over Monday (which is four days away); a bad week doesn't mean you are so far gone that you can't recover. It is never too late if you begin with the next meal.
The thing I want all of you to take away from this is that this is LIFETIME ladies. The wagon has a magical way of picking you up at a moments notice. When you reach up and holler it just appears with a helping hand. I promise you, the PNP wagon is only a little yelp for help away.