Consistency is the spice of life

My friend Mike has a funny little catch-phrase that suits him to a T.  He says: “Consistency is the spice of life.”

If you know Mike you know what a wonderful, consistent, productive great guy he is. Mike is very successful in both his personal and professional life. Lots of people call him lucky, but I see how he has juiced his own luck by consistently tending to what is important to him. He stays focused.

When I had my daughter my fabulous friend Rhonda, one of the best moms I know,  told me the most important thing I can do as a parent is to be consistent. That way your kids know the boundaries, know what to expect, know they can count on you. It makes being a parent so much easier, and helps your kids feel more secure and loved.

Heather at Halfsizeme.com, who has lost 170 pounds and kept it off, says that the reason she has time to plan meals, eat well, homeschool her boys, exercise consistently and run a growing business is that she has a short list of priorities. No doubt that makes it easier to not get distracted from what she strives to do consistently.

I am trying to be more consistent these days. I am prioritizing.  I am seeing that consistent efforts yield consistent results.

I am also so frustrated sometimes that it is taking me so long to lose weight, but then again I understand why.

I am working hard to develop consistent habits, and since that doesn’t seem to come naturally to me it is taking time. But I don’t want to just lose weight: I want to keep it off and really create the life I want in the future. That little daughter of ours is going off to college in three and a half years and my husband and I are starting to daydream about what our next chapter will be. What I do now will determine what the next phase of my life will look like. I want to grow old with my sweet, funny, darling husband, and be energetic to the end. I don’t want to be in ill health, or be a burden to him.

So here, in a nutshell, is my weight loss plan: I am striving to be more consistent. And  I am not giving up on myself.

That is really it, the secret to my budding success. 33 pounds down, and much more to go. A bad meal or a bad day or a skipped work out or a pity party or crisis large or small is not derailing me. For the healthier among you, you might be saying, well, yeah, why would you give up on yourself? But then you might not have spent a lifetime struggling with weight, gaining and losing and gaining and losing so many times I have lost count. Giving up after a binge. Giving up, just because of the holidays, which of course is tantamount to giving up. Unless I started a new diet on January first, which I would give up around March. A few times I had fleeting success: I would lose a lot of weight and THEN give up on myself and gain it back, usually with the added bonus of extra pounds.

So yeah, I am doing Weight Watchers and exercising and trying to stay inspired and surrounding myself with my cheerleaders. I am tracking my food and keeping healthy stuff in the house and I could go on and on, and in fact might get more into the nitty gritty in my next post.

But the most consistent behavior I am doing is just not giving up. I am imperfectly, but consistently, lurching toward my goals. That seems to be the magic.