What are you willing to do?

Really, it’s a very sim­ple ques­tion, isn’t it?

What are you will­ing to do in order to improve the qual­ity of your life?

Notice that I did not say “lose weight.” That’s just a nice side effect of a new approach to liv­ing. ¹

That’s the ques­tion I ask myself every morn­ing. At a min­i­mum. Some­times I ask myself the same ques­tion a num­ber of times through­out the day, depend­ing on whether it is a good day, judged from the per­spec­tive of mak­ing good choices for myself or, as I wrote about in my last arti­cle, a chal­leng­ing one.

Over at Tales from the Scales, yes­ter­day was weigh-in day and a lot of the par­tic­i­pants were dis­cour­aged. For one thing, we just had a three-day, hol­i­day week­end. More­over, the “new­ness” and nov­elty of a revised eat­ing plan is wear­ing off for some of the folks who signed on, I believe.

It’s just how I live now … it’s not a diet.

One of the blog authors sug­gested that this week par­tic­i­pants con­sider their answer to this ques­tion: “What are you going to do dif­fer­ently this week?” In my opin­ion, there’s noth­ing wrong with that approach and I hope it works for a lot of people.

How­ever, I do not include the last three words when I ana­lyze my own will­ing­ness to remain com­mit­ted to the plan I have devel­oped for myself. Why?

Because I am not on a diet. I have changed my life. There­fore, the ques­tion is open-ended … not lim­ited to an hour, part of a day, one whole day, a week, a month or even a year. The changes I have made must be per­ma­nent. My plan has to just be “how I live” for the remain­der of my life. It is the only way I can retain the ben­e­fits I am already enjoy­ing … and con­tinue to reap more.

May Day Weight Loss Challenge

Track­posted to Right Pun­dits, Perri Nelson’s Web­site, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Aza­mat­tero­fact, DeMe­di­a­cratic Nation, guer­rilla radio, Maggie’s Note­book, Weblog­gin, Lean­ing Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, The Bull­win­kle Blog, The Amboy Times, The Florida Masochist, Col­lo­quium, Con­ser­v­a­tive Cat, Pur­su­ing Holi­ness, Blue Col­lar Muse, stikN­stein… has no mercy, The Crazy Rants of Saman­tha Burns, Gulf Coast Hur­ri­cane Tracker, Right Voices, and The Yan­kee Sailor, thanks to Link­fest Haven Deluxe.

1. I’m down 53 pounds so far! How­ever, the phys­i­cal change is more dra­matic than the num­ber sug­gests because I am build­ing lean mus­cle and reduc­ing my over­all body fat percentage.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Fem­i­nism, Weight Issues, Weight Man­age­ment

On the Same Topic:

• Read­ing Project: Fat is a Fem­i­nist Issue (Week One)
• Read­ing Project: Fat is a Fem­i­nist Issue
• The One Lie My Mother Told Me (Part Two)
• I Hate My Clothes
• Time to Shop