I’ve spent the last few weeks writing about the range of emotions I’ve felt as I’ve looked over the past six years of my journey. Finally, now, I find myself in a place I’ve never really been on any previous attempt toward health.

I am ready.

Ready to take on the shift into maintenance, certainly, as I come steadily nearer to the balancing point where my focus will adjust to seeing what my body is now capable of doing.

Ready to enjoy and experience the things this body can do so much better, now, and love every moment.

Ready to conquer any further mental battles needed to prevent ever going back where I’ve been, before.

That’s really the biggest part for me — my thought processes undid 140 pounds of progress over a decade ago, my biggest and most successful effort to that point in my life — and also my biggest failure.

I thought I had everything figured out. I didn’t reach my final weight destination, but my biggest issue wasn’t getting the weight off; it was changing my thinking. I didn’t do the necessary mental and emotional work, and I betrayed myself into regaining every single pound, as well as every regret I thought I had cast off.

I no longer deal with the mental clutter that I did, then; I was much more likely to gloss over the warning signs and insist I was right than to dig in and work at the things that needed solutions. I wasn’t truthfully open to learning what I needed to learn. Now, I don’t find myself fearful of those same situations or surprised by the changes in the ways the world perceives me.

As I’ve said, previously, that failure was largely because I didn’t commit to the necessary mental changes, and the speed of my weight loss contributed to that. My 140-pound loss was over the course of a bit more than a year; that might seem like a long time, but it’s a drop in the bucket when considering how much mental work needed to be done, and that doesn’t happen overnight. Taking things slowly has allowed me the great opportunity to examine both mental and physical issues and figure them out. At first, I saw the slow loss as a curse; now I see it as a gift.

I know my future will still hold challenges to what I believe about both my body and mind. This is true for all of us, but in the past, how I chose to approach those challenges often defeated me. My reactions are different, now, and I must always remain aware so I don’t slide back into unhealthy reactions, but I’m stronger. I know how to deal with them.

I’m just slightly above the weight goal I set over 6 years ago. I never once believed I would achieve it; I just knew that I needed to lose about 200 pounds, so I picked it. In some ways, I think it was an apology and a recognition that I knew I was that much overweight, and maybe if people knew I was admitting to it, maybe I could relieve some of the guilt I felt over being morbidly obese. Yet, here I am, just a couple of pounds away from that number. I’ve since decided to go a little bit further, but not by much; only in an attempt to get to a weight that is no longer considered obese.

The nature of the work will change and continue once I reach that mark; nothing stops when I magically cross that 30 BMI marker. It just takes on a different focus and the work will be equal to what I’ve put in.

The journey will continue, and I am ready, like never before.