Feeling Abundant While Losing Weight

I have become a somewhat accidental expert on weight loss. How did that happen? I have been on several diets over the last 20 years and have gained and lost enough weight to clone myself.

In the last two and a half years I managed to comfort eat myself to one pound shy of what I weighed when I was nine months pregnant. I knew I was getting heavier and heavier yet I couldn’t bring myself to get back on track. I really didn’t feel like depriving myself of my goodies, my comfort. I had experienced a lot of change in my life and this was a way to fill those new voids. Did I know better? Yes!

I would say to myself “I don’t FEEL like watching everything I eat. I don’t FEEL like giving up cheese, chips and chocolate. I don’t FEEL like making the effort”. I FELT fat, ugly and lethargic and, that is exactly what I was.

That was last winter. In March the penny finally dropped for me and I made the decision to nurture myself in the right ways and get back on a track of being the healthy, energetic woman I knew I could be. (See: Choosing to Lose Weight and The Path of Lease Resistance)

Although there are many reasons why I succeeded and will continue to succeed in staying healthy, I will not get into them all here. I will tell you the one big ah-ha that I had and it has to do with FEELINGS.

I know there are many of you out there struggling to lose or maintain a healthy weight. Obesity is a huge health issue here in North America (See: Obesity about far more than body image)

As I embarked on my journey to change the way I eat I had a moment where I wanted to kick myself. I was in a place of feeling deprived that I couldn’t choose to buy exactly what I felt like eating. This was while I stood in the aisle of a huge box store staring at one of easily thirty long walls of food.

How can I (we as a culture) ever, ever feel deprived as we stand in a store that could easily feed a small country? What is going on? Here I was having paid a couple of hundred dollars to join Weigh Watchers to help me learn to control myself as I cruise through the grocery store piling whatever it is I want into my basket? Duh!

Do you think it is possible to change how we feel about weight management? Can we look at it from a “glass half full” perspective? Yes! Here is the script that runs through my head now as I continue to manage my weight (I am down to my goal weight and became a lifetime member of Weight Watchers yesterday – I look and feel great).

- I am so abundant. I was able to afford to actually pay to join a weight loss program.
- I live is such an abundant country that I have unlimited choice in what I eat each day.
- I am so fortunate to have had a free education and am able to read and understand how to make this work for me easily.
- I live in an abundantly safe part of this planet where I can go out and enjoy walking each day in safety.
- I have an abundance of beautiful clean air to breath in as I exercise.
- I have an abundant supply of fresh water to drink.
- I have access to a vast variety of recipes to choose from.
- I have access to quick and easy ready-made foods that are healthy for me.

Do you get the picture? The law of the universe is simple. Like attracts like. If we feel grateful and abundant about any opportunities we have in life, we will continue to attract more opportunities.

In a world that is changing rapidly. In an economy that is waning. With media touting all that is negative. It can be difficult to choose to look for abundance in your life. But, you know it is there don’t you? All you need to do is shift your focus and change your language away from the don’t haves to the do haves. If you are sitting somewhere reading this, on a computer…then I would strongly suspect you can easily find a long list of what is abundant in your life at this moment. That is where to start. That will bring you the feelings you need to ATTRACT MORE JOY into your life.

Written by Louise Aspden of AttractMoreJoy.com.

Photo by Michael Henderson

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 6:19 am and is filed under Body & Soul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Feeling Abundant While Losing Weight”

1. Feeling Abundant While Losing Weight | the-exercise-site.com says:
   July 9th, 2008 at 6:30 am

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