Cruising

For the past six months (almost), losing weight has been my number one activity, priority and mindset.  I have been obsessed with the numbers...weighing every day, calculating my average weight loss per week, estimating the number of ounces of chicken in Patsy's Famous Oriental Chicken Salad at the church potluck. 

In the meantime and along the way, I've managed to accomplish a few other things.  I finished moving into our new home, made some purses, rang handbells and sang in the choir at church.  I spent hours at the pool with my friends and enjoyed numerous social gatherings.  I worked on organizing my sewing studio and taught two teenagers how to make purses.  I went on a couple of short trips, spent three weeks doing absolutely nothing because I was sick, hosted a Christmas/Epiphany party.  I made several new friends in our new neighborhood, refurbished our previous home and became a landlord.  I wrote 110 blog posts. 

And today it hit me:  Losing weight is not what I'm doing.  It's what happening while I live my life.  The life that I am living happens to support losing weight.  I didn't have to change my everything about my life to lose weight...just parts of it.  It took a lot of mental energy to make those changes, especially in the beginning.  But now the new eating habits I'm learning are becoming a part of the fabric of my life, just as the old overeating habits were a part of my life before.

I once read that an airplane uses most of its fuel just getting off the ground.  The rest is just cruising.

I think I might finally be off the ground.