Just for Today

You’ve been struggling with your weight for as long as you can remember and it’s a new year. This is usually when you head to Target for cute work-out clothes, then to the closest gym to enthusiastically join (of course the initiation fee will be waived). Lastly, you very deliberately find yourself in the grocery store stocking up on all the healthy foods needed for your new diet. All the while, you are filled with a combination of personal resolve and familiar doubt.

Yes, it has to happen. There is no way you can start another year overweight and out of shape. You tell yourself this time, this year, will be different. I’m ready! Or are you? Enter…the familiar doubt. Memories of all your past good intentions slither through your mind as you look down at your body with much dissatisfaction and negative judgment. Why would this time be any different? What if I can’t?

But you can. If I can, you can. I promise! I rang in the New Year with a sense of satisfaction knowing that January 1, 2012 was just another day. True, it might be the beginning of a New Year, but it’s still just another day. And for me, I know I can do almost anything for one day.

That is the way I approach my weight management. I don’t summon up future visions of me running a half marathon or sitting on the beaches of the French Riviera in a string bikini. I decide that just for today I will eat three clean meals and that I will give up desserts. Just for today I will not eat off of other people’s plates or in my car. Just for today I will eat at the kitchen table and not in front of the television. Just for today I won’t help myself to seconds and I will serve myself on an appetizer-sized plate. Just for today I will get on the treadmill for forty minutes.  Just for today I will elevate the status of my food, eating it mindfully and with sincere gratitude.

I don’t worry about tomorrow or next month. All I need to do is right in front of me and when I do it for just one day, it leads me to tomorrow. If I concentrate on how much weight I have to lose or how truly out of shape I am, I feel overwhelmed. Even worse, I feel deprived and deprivation drives me back into the food.

One day at a time I take my health back. One day at a time, I live the healthy lifestyle that becomes a way of life. It’s not about forever because I am only guaranteed of today, and today I choose to respect the gift of this body.