Happy New Year

It's been quite awhile since I last checked in here. Not that I pigged out during the holidays. Still, I managed to unlearn a lot of the new habits I'd been trying to form, that BelleToday has been helping me form.

So to get that message that they've reset the programs for the new year was a pleasant surprise. I was already going to try to figure out how I could reset my program myself, so it was a truly great New Year's gift to have had it done for me!

But more than the favor, it reminds me of forgiveness. A chance to start afresh after how you blew it. To be told that past is past, let's start over, it's okay.

That attitude was one of the things that helped me start getting my health back. When I first met Irl, I was a svelte 115 pounds. By the time we got married, I had bloated to 142. But a few months after that, I saw an old friend who is usually wider than me looking like a college teen!

She and her husband told us about the Zone diet by Dr. Barry Sears. Basically, it's a pretty mild version of Atkins. His point was simply that in trying to avoid fat, protein intake suffered, and carbohydrate consumption shot through the roof. The imbalance was just as deadly.

So basically, he advocated a balance of the macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein and fat). It worked so well for me, I dared Irl to try it. I told him to give it two weeks, and if it didn't work for him, I would buy him all the chocolates and chips he wanted.

I never did. Before the first week was over, he was already feeling great!

But what I really lked about Dr. Sears was when he said that if you make a mistake in one meal, just start over again on your next meal.

Too often when trying to stick to a diet, we get depressed when we fail, and then deal with it by: "Oh, crap! Oh well, might as well wolf the rest of this down, I've already broken my diet."

This "forgive yourself and start over" was what helped me stick to the diet. Incorporate it, in fact, into my life. I know that by the time I was found pregnant 10 months after I started, I was already down to 132. And I used the proportions he recommended for my pregnancy diet, with some adjustments.

I was back at 132 within a month of giving birth to our twins.

I've stopped doing New Year's resolutions after that. I just resolve to do it whenever I fall off the wagon, so to speak, which is really rather often. I have stopped choosing to feed my guilt, and instead I choose to take responsibility, then positive action.

I never expected a diet plan to help me stop being a perfectionist and become more at ease with myself, and more forgiving of myself and others. Sure, I know about what Jesus had done for me in Calvary, but that He would use a diet plan to explain forgiveness to me...

Whatever works. Thanks, Lord.^_^

And so, as i get into this new year, I have forgiven myself for the indulgence of Christmas. I will not regret feasting with friends I haven't seen for a long time, and family I don't see often enough. Or the dates Irl and I made up for because he had a ten-day break from work.

No way. I am grateful for all that! And I am grateful that i can start over, even here. Thanks, Belle Today. I really, truly appreciate the reset.

'Scuse me while I get some water...again.^_^