Day 192 I Won't Go Back, I Stand With His Backing

I have not seen this discussed on other blogs that I can think of, so I am gonna cover it here, and I welcome all comments. There are a few in this community that are considered successes. Some think of me as being well along this road and having done well for myself. I would like to say thank you so much to those people and let them know, they have been a big huge part of that. But, I have a dirty little secret. Okay not dirty but it is still a secret. Not often, but sometimes, and at random times, I worry that this trip, this journey, this version 4.0 or whatever number I am on, will end like the rest. I will get to where I was aiming for, decide that I am the man, and lose vigilance, slowly at first maybe, but sink right back into the poor eating and no exercising habits that got me here today. Sometimes it is a fleeting thought, sometimes it holds my attention for a few minutes. But it is still a fear.

So a little history on this version of my journey. It came about in a special way, so I believe it is a permanent change in lifestyle I am enjoying. I was languishing in the fact that I knew I was fat, knew I was doing terrible things to my health and knew that I was destined for an early exit to this world if I didn't get my head right. Not that I didn't know that for all the other years previous, but this time, there was a new wrinkle. I had a family now. Marrying Kathy made my life so much more complete, and I thank God for her. But I was being irresponsible in my duty as a husband. For any new folks out there, I am on a mission. Got started a little late in life, but I am currently in my last semester in undergrad school, getting my Bachelor's Degree in May, and with God's Will I am going to law school in August. I do all this because my family deserves a better life than i am giving them right now. It is in that premise that this journey to weight loss and change of lifestyle was born. I sat around days and nights worrying, what if I passed away before I was able to get Lauren to college and into a good career or before I had provided a comfortable retirement for Kathy. I worried that I would just get started on giving them a good life and then leave them high and dry. Queue the power of prayer. I had tried a few times before to get a roll going, dropped 10 or 20 pounds here and there, gained it all back, not gotten any traction. I was getting frustrated. I just needed to find that one thing, that one set of circumstances that get me going, to make me motivated enough to see that this was not as hard as I was making it be. So, I asked God, please, show me the way. For the sake of my family, please put it in my heart, give me the determination and the wisdom and the strength to do what is right for my family. And you know what, "ask and ye shall receive" is not bunk people! He did exactly that. He put the link to Sean Anderson's blog in my path. I was in charge of email monitoring in my old firm. I checked our email addresses multiple times a day, one of which was on AOL. I always had to navigate past the front page of AOL to get to the mail tab. AOL usually features some news stories and human interest stories on that page and typically I would see them just long enough for the page to change to the e mail page. the stories scroll, so it could be I would catch two of the five stories they are featuring before I got to the e mail screen. So, that day, they happened to be running the story about Sean having lost a great deal of weight, but never having eaten a salad. I actually let it go on by, but that title stuck in my head. After getting the e mail checking done and getting some other work that was pressing finished, I found myself in a lull. So I went back, read the article. I was drawn in. It talked about how he had blogged and his strategy and several other aspects of his weight loss. I clicked on his blog link, and history was made. I read a few days worth of posts there at work, then sent myself the link at home, and i spent that whole evening reading about Sean's journey. It was eye opening and eye popping at the same time. I felt the movement in my heart that night. I knew this was what was going to happen for me! God had answered my prayers! I knew it immediately.

I started my journey the next Sunday, July 17, 2010. I am where I am today because of His Grace and His Glory. I will shout that from the mountain tops and stand on His Word that I am not going back. He answered my prayers, He put me on this road, and He will keep me strong. I will not be returning to my old ways. I trust His gift, I love His gift to me, and I will fight for it like a lion!

Do ya'll have a similar story to share? I would love to hear it in comments or in an email. Let me know about how you got started, and how you feel about your fears of possibly failing.