Falling off the wagon

Lately I've been obsessed with reading running or weight loss blogs and message boards, and despite the nuggets of wisdom I've been able to glean, I've also found myself mildly disheartened by the number of folks who are (at any given time) cheating or restarting or falling off the wagon.

I don't mean to sound unsympathetic. As a woman who weighs 216 pounds and who has spent the past decade at least fifty pounds overweight, it would be laughable of me to judge those who are having a rough time with their weight loss. In fact, it's my familiarity with those words that makes them so sad to me. How many times did I "restart my diet", or "cheat", or say "today I'll have what I want, but I'm getting serious on Monday!" And Monday never came. Tomorrow never came.

I am not sure what happened to me this Spring, but something clicked for the first time, and I realized that all I have is Today. I knew that phrase before, of course, and I might even have said it, but it didn't connect. Now it does. Now I don't "cheat" (because food has no inherent moral value) and I don't "fall off the wagon." I might make unhealthy choices, and I might gain a few pounds, but I am trying very hard not to let myself think of my food and exercise as a temporary goal. I don't just want to *be* thinner, or more altheletic, I want to *stay* thinner and to continue to challenge my body.

Which is not to say that any of this is easy, it's just the place I'm in right now - focusing on the moment, and on the benefits of being mindful of my health, even if the result isn't what I hoped and planned for. And I hope someone here will remind me of that when the inevitable day comes when I "fall off the wagon." :)