As of this moment, I am 90.8 pounds down. Pretty amazing!

I recently read an article titled 10 Tips for Losing 100 Pounds or More on WebMD. In all, the article offered some decent, solid advice, and I’ve done many of the tips. Some time to look at an article on how to lose 100 pounds or more when I’m 90 pounds into it, right? Anyway… #8, Ditch The Dieting Mindset, resounded with me.

91 pounds of babies. Hey, I’m only .2 away from this…

This is something I’ve slowly been coming to terms with as I near a halfway point and continue to evolve in my weight loss. It’s especially true, now, with the holidays looming in the near future, and photos of delicious holiday treats parading through my social media accounts.

When it comes to weight loss, I tend to live in the future; I look forward to future weight loss goals. I have a drawer of clothes that are slightly too small, and I try them on every once in a while to see if they fit, yet. I think of what I’ll be able to accomplish at various points of loss, and I have thoughts of what life will be like when I’m able to do things I’m currently unable to do. As I travel in reverse through my smaller waves of clothes, I laughingly wonder if the seasons will line up; and right now, they don’t. I have cute clothes I bought for vacation in July of 2012; they fit now… in November. Such is life.

There will come a day when I’ve reached my weight loss goal, whatever I decide that will be, but I’ve come to accept that the process will never be over. There will not come a day when I wake up and regain the ability to eat without consequence. I could do that when I was 16; not now, in my 50’s. So the morning I wake up and I have achieved those goals is also the morning I start on another journey: maintaining what I’ve accomplished, perfecting the process, learning to live in my changed body.

While I know there are many people, especially heading into the holiday season, that tell themselves it’s time to make (yet another!) New Year’s Resolution to lose weight, and get on a diet (after the holidays, of course!) and immediately think of the day they will go off the diet — there is no such thing for me. Accepting that the only way to make my goals is to accept that I am not on a diet is sometimes hard to wrap my mind around, because to me, “diet” means “temporary”. I’ve had to break out of the mindset that weight loss is a process with a definite ending; it’s simply not true. It’s a lifetime commitment.

I’ve been on this journey for well over two years, now. Ain’t nuthin’ temporary about this!

Generally, I try to find the positive aspects of this process, and many may not consider this a positive at all, but I do. So many of us learn to live with restrictions; understanding that your body requires and reacts with nutrition in certain ways is simply learning to live with a restriction. It’s compromise, in the same way putting contact lenses in my eyes is a compromise taken on in order to see well. (If only losing weight were as easy!)

In the larger order of things, I would choose to live with this restriction and this understanding than others. Walking away from it means willingly choosing the high risk of diabetes, of heart disease, of further arthritic degeneration, and other complications of morbid obesity.

I choose this path — and willingly.