I bought myself two little cheap rings, recently, and after a hiatus of not really wearing all that much jewelry, I put them on today.

The first is a simple band that has etched on it “she believed she could, so she did”. (And you guessed it… you’ll learn about the other one next week.)

If there’s any one phrase that summarizes my journey so far, it’s this one. I had to believe I was capable of achieving health in order to succeed.

I didn’t believe it, at first. Quite honestly, I scared myself into giving weight loss another shot. I felt awful pretty much all of the time. If my heart wasn’t galloping, I could barely catch my breath. I struggled with simple things; I held my breath to tie my shoes because I could barely reach my feet. My daily life consisted of just trying to make sure I’d make it through until the next day. I could no longer stand living like that, worrying about how much of life I missed, how much of a burden I was to those who love me.

So, not believing, I mustered up what little courage I had at the time and totally faked my way through the first stages.

While I believe that in order to in order to succeed, you must have your head in the right place, I no longer buy that you have to be ready to start. For someone with no real health risks, it’s not horrible advice to wait until you’re ready to commit, but for those of us with serious health issues don’t have that luxury. We either start and work on getting our heads in the right place, or our health continues to suffer; possibly to a point where there is no return.

That’s where I was when I started. After some pretty spectacular weight loss failures, I was the least likely one to believe in my own success, and if this is how you feel about your efforts, you’re not alone. Not by far.

I knew that I would need to get my head in the right place, and the more I proved to myself that I could make my life just a smidgen easier/better/healthier than I’d been the day before, the more I started to believe I could actually do this. Along the way, I’ve learned not only a lot about myself and my body, but about the process of becoming.

In the beginning, I thought of the days when I was thin and happy, and chided myself for thinking I could ever be that person, again. I had been sold a bill of goods; thin does not equal happiness or success. Success comes in increments along the way. If I were to never lose another ounce, and simply be where I am at this moment, this effort would be a total success.

Yes, I intend to keep pushing forward. I do have a weight goal in mind, but not because I want to achieve some pinnacle of success where I can finally say “I did it!” For me, reaching that weight goal is just a statistic for the insurance company, and has little bearing on when I decide to maintain my weight. That has more to do with my health, and may change as I continue to age.

I’ve come to understand that this isn’t an all-or-nothing deal; it’s a sliding scale of improvement that requires adjustments as I go along. Success comes in tiny steps, not large leaps.

I believed I could. So I did. And I still do.