New Year's Then, New Year's Now, and a Sobering Read To Center Me For The Tough Road in 2012...And if you're starting a New Year's "Resolution" Diet, face the cold, hard facts about failure. BUT HEY, let's work to be one of the few, few, fortunate freaks who succeed!

January 1, 2012: 183 lbs

Red accents, signature natural curls,
skin-tight DKNY top, 183 lbs on 51 year-old bones.
Regained 5 lbs, and got my invisible fight gloves on...

This is in contrast to every other year in the new millenium, when I was over 200, and mostly SERIOUSLY over (as in obese, morbidly obese, crazy butt obese). Here's a snapshot of three consecutive "first days":

January 1, 2010: 267

January 1 2011:  235

January 1, 2012: 183

I spent the 90's obese, so I'm weighing what I did in the late 80's. Still overweight...but way better than my high of 299 in 2004. Click my page tab --Progress Pics--to see me at those previous weights.

I have done this look back thing before on January 1. It's a way to see if I'm standing still, fatwise, or moving forward. 2010 and 2011 were years of learning and progress, rather than just standing still.

2012 is gonna be a superhard year. People often think it's the main losing phase that's the hardest. No, it's the NOT REGAINING and maintaining losses that's hard. Here's testimony of how easy it is to just...start regaining.

Even though I have more I want to lose, my main focus in 2012 is NOT TO REGAIN WHAT I HAVE LOST through the evolving change in my food and movement habits and persistent focus and hard work --- emotional and mind and spirit work.

Naturally lean people have no idea how hard this is. NOT ONE CLUE. Their genetically blessed pedestal keeps them out of the muck we have to slog through. They eat to satiety and maintain normality.

Ah, if only that were my lot. Just minor attention to diet details, and voila. I'm normal.

In my dreams.

We must be hypervigilant at first, vigilant all times thereafter--with occasional phases of renewed hypervigilance, too. That is our lot,   all of us prone to fat or once-obese. Ours is a lifelong struggle that all the researchers out there continually report we are likely--very, very likely--to fail at. Regain is the norm. Keeping it off is an anomaly.

I want to be that anomaly.

What that takes is a focused and lifelong dedication to fighting our instinct to eat, fighting against the stresses and busyness  that interfere with food planning/cooking and exercising and journaling and meditation--all those strategies we employ. What it takes is sometimes accepting a weight higher, way higher, than we ideally want, because it's what we can reasonably sustain.

Some things are never gonna be ideal. And some things are never gonna be carefree and easy.

Keeping weight down will never be easy for most of us, and never be carefree. We can dream it, hope and pray it, but this is combat. Neverending combat.

If that scares you, good. Be scared. As you start your "New Year's Resolution Diet"--kow the reality of it. Face it. Accept it. Take off the rosy sunglasses and stare at it. You will likely fail. You must want desperately to win and that desperation must hound your feet for life or relapse cometh.

I want to be scared of regain, and I want to hold on to my losses so much that I do NOT slack off and lose focus.

I will never be lean like the blessed slim. I know it. Instinctively. Historically. Know it.

But I can be a healthier me that is not impeded by, stifled from, shrouded in fat.

The road ahead is bumpy, steep, tricky, often foggy, sometimes menacing, packed with minefields and pitfalls and highwaymen aiming tempting morsels with one hand and trying to steal our resolve with the other,  but it also has lovely flowers, shady fruit trees, kind companions, guardian angels, and amazing sunrises.

I'm scared. And I'm psyched.

To stay scared, I'm reading RETHINKING THIN.  It's a six buck bargain book right now on Amazon, and if you even slightly believe you've got this in the bag, it's a snap (ie, honeymoon diet phase), you need to read this.

To stay psyched, I have my challenge books--REFUSE TO REGAIN, THE SMARTER SCIENCE OF SLIM, and SWITCH. All of them are rereads, which shows how much I value the info there in, and how much we simply need to apply what we already know, review and reapply. Two helped me in 2010. One is a newer read for me, from a couple months back.

This week, keep an eye for my review of TRANSFORMATION ROAD by Sean Anderson, a fellow blogging fatfighter (and cutiepie!)  He's one of those kind travellers along this hard, hard, beautiful road.

The odds say we're gonna turn back, leave the path, and pile on the fat again.

Our hopes and prayers and actions must continually say, "I will beat these terrifying odds. I will find a way, and I will not lose heart."

I was given my "word" for the year...and it's a phrase this year, in contrast to all my other years in this millenium. It's this phrase: "open doors". I will post on it later on...the ramifications of this phrase...

May God be with us...with many, many amazing doors opening up for us by His grace and mercy....