Half-Empty

I don't know about you, but that glass looks half-empty to me.

I am not an optimistic person by nature. I can "fake it 'til I make it" if I have to, but really, I'd rather not perpetuate that one big lie that everything will be all right. Because sometimes, it's not.

So many weight loss blogs are run by dieting newbs - or re-re-re-re-re-re-re-newbs who have started and stopped so many times that they've lost count. When you are new to a plan and focused on eating right and getting heatlhy, it's really easy to be optimistic about everything.

How could anything possibly go wrong when you have a week's supply of salad and shriveled up chicken breasts at your disposal? Add to that a shiny new bike/treadmill/exercise DVD just waiting to help you melt the pounds and you have a golden ticket to Weight Loss Paradise.

Aww, that's nice that you have a sparkly new lifestyle plan, sweetie. I'm happy you're excited for it. Just don't pee on the carpet. You come and see me again in a year and we'll talk about it, mm'kay?

A year later, a lot of us are exactly the same size we've always been, give or take 10-pounds in either direction.

What happened?

Maybe a birthday party came along and that one piece of icinged chocolate doom sent her screaming over the edge and plunging into a vat of caramel.

Maybe she never fully recovered from the triple whammy of Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas, a triumvirate of dieting disasters, just waiting to happen.

Maybe life happened.

When this shit piles up and life, friends, family, work, etc. all seem far too much to focus on and still have time to dedicate to the thing we should be most dedicated to - ourselves - it's time to look around and check out all of those half-empty glasses (and soda bottles... and chip bags... and cookie boxes... oh, no, I never have half-empty cookie boxes... those get eaten in their entirity).

Everyone who has ever cracked open a magazine, bent the spine of a diet book, logged into a health website knows the benefits of losing weight. But is anyone ever completely aware of the negatives of not losing weight? We're all aware of the big three...

Diabetes
Heart disease
Cancer (maybe, they're still working on that one)

But, focusing on stuff that's so huge, so monumental, so life-altering, can be really difficult to handle sometimes. I know that I don't want to add the stress of thinking about my impending doom every time I glance sideways at a piece of cake, because you know what that kind of stress makes me want to do? Eat some freaking cake, that's what.

I would rather think about that little crap that gets us all down from time to time. Whoever said "Don't sweat the small stuff" was totally full of shit. Here are the little cons from my Pros and Cons to Eating Healthily List...

Skin - Eating crap and not drinking enough water wreaks havoc on my skin. I haven't been this broken out and/or flakey since the chocolate-crisco-dorito facial fiasco of '98).

Stairs - Guess what, dummy? Climbing stairs is a lot more difficult carrying 10 extra pounds up with you.

Clothes - Squeezing into formerly loose clothes is always a great confidence killer. Would you like a little butter on that super sized muffin top, chubbo?

Confidence - There's a noticeable difference in how I walk when I know I've lost 10-pounds vs. when I know I've gained 10-pounds... and it's not because that 10-pounds makes it harder for me to stand upright physically, but it does pull a number on the brain.

Self-Talk - It's easier to use positive self-talk in order to "fake it 'til I make it" when I'm not actually faking it. Telling myself "You can do it!" isn't faking it when I actually AM doing it.

Social Life - Working up the desire to be social and spend time with people is a lot easier when I suspect they may say something like, "Hey, wow, you've lost weight!" as opposed to thinking, "Well, she let herself go even MORE, didn't she?"

All of those things are immediate (and crucial) elements in my daily life. They are things that affect me NOW - who I am, what I do, how I live. Heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are these amorphous, horrific ideas that float out there in the void, occasionally taunting me with their blobby tentacles, but never really making an impact on my life as it is today.

As for me, I'm going to sweat the small stuff - today, and every day that I need a reminder of why I am constantly striving for calories in to be less than calories out.