This weight loss journey is so much more than just changing your food patterns and losing a few pounds.
Here’s a picture of me that my daughter took of me in front a tree we lost during the storms that flew through here the other night. I went out to look at the tree and realized that although the tree looked outwardly healthy, the roots were rotting and the tree was rotting from the inside out.
The storms reminded me of how important it is to be grounded in your weight loss journey.
When the storms come in your weight loss journey, they don’t generally come in the form of wind – but rather in the form of:
- Tragedy
- Job Losses
- Emotional Upheaval
- Stressful Situations
- Social Eating
I’d like to encourage you to continually work on grounding your weight loss journey with each passing day. For me, that meant working on the emotional side of weight loss while learning to make good food choices. I had learned through the 563 diets I had previously tried that it was “easy” to make good choices when things in my life were clicking along nicely, but when the first little “issue” came up, I quickly turned away from healthy eating and turned back to what felt right. And unfortunately, what “felt right” wasn’t what was right for me and for my health.
Like the tree in the picture, a weight loss journey without strong roots will never survive. Building and growing those roots took me a long time – and even after 13 years of weight maintenance – I still need to make sure that my eating habits are grounded in healthy choices and work hard at keeping myself from falling back into emotional eating habits. That’s 13 years of grounding myself.
The point of all of your hard work to get to a healthy weight is to stay at a healthy weight for you for the rest of your life. To grow your roots strong, I encourage you to:
- Look at your history and try to identify some of your main issues with food.
- Teach yourself to analyze emotions you have associated with food.
- Learn to identify times of the day or situations that make you want to eat.
- Plan your food carefully until you begin to feel that healthy eating is really the “new you.”
Do you feel you are growing new roots in your journey? Any time you struggled before because your roots weren’t strong? Diane
I love this post Diane! What a great analogy. You are so right, if we aren’t grounded in our journey its not going to work. This also reminds me that yes we do not know what is going on inside of our bodies what could be lingering waiting to get out. Losing weight and staying grounded in our health management can deter whatever it may be to come out or at least give us the ability to manage it better.
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I like the post. I have to say that for the first time in my life, I am now growing new roots for the rest of my life
I did struggle in the past where my roots weren’t strong enough. When times like retrenchment and homelessness came into the picture, my roots rotted away and I’ve fallen into the fatty greasy food trap again.
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Thankfully for those of us in East Tennessee, those storms began to weaken as they came off the plateau. I have friends, family and BlogFriends from the west end of the state to the east end and thought of all of you as I watched the storms march across the state!
Thing about those roots is, you really don’t know how strong they are until they are tested. Yes, mine are getting stronger, but sometimes the testing reveals I still have a long way to go!
Loved the analogy!
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I love this analogy. I think part of my problem in the past has been that I have not been grounded.
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Terrific post Diane. Yes, strong roots are so important. Me, I’m still working on growing mine.
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Love Diane! First, glad all of you are safe! But this is such an important post & for me, each day is anew day to learn!
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How true…growing the roots and the foundation is SO important. It seems as if I skip a step, I eventually have to go back to the beginning. BEST analogy!
Wonderful post, Diane! I have a best friend visiting this week and was very worried about gaining weight while she’s here, but I’m finding myself sticking to my “new” eating habits and am not up on the scale so far. I know this is because my habits are becoming solid in my life.
I now know for a fact the reason I never reached a healthy weight before and/or kept any weight I lost off is because I wasn’t truly grounded in my change in healthy lifestyle.
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This is a great post! Thank you so much for your inspiration. I’m printing this out and keeping it in my food journal as a reminder to stay grounded.
Great post and analogy.
It is amazing how quickly healthy roots can get sick and cause the whole tree to topple over.
It can take one little bump in the journey to topple the healthy habits, some times they are not even bad bumps but something like a vacation to topple me – I obviously need deeper stronger roots!!!
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This brings up one of my pitfalls for sure – turning to food in times of stress. I’ve tried to mitigate that by pre-cooking/having meals ready – but sometimes I still want something outside of that. I’m getting better as far as turning to the RIGHT foods, but it’s definitely a journey!
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I always looked at dieting as a solution to my weight problem. My problem was WHY I ate to much…I could diet like a champ…then something would go wrong in life and I would literally balloon up to about 10 pounds more than the weight I was when I began the ‘diet.’
IN order to grow roots I had to really work harder than any diet. It took taking a hard look at my real self. Therapy and prayer have got me further along this time…but it has been much more difficult.
…and so worth it!
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Diane – powerful information that should be repeated again and again on every blog that promotes long term recovery and not diet mentality. THANK YOU for the reminder here.
I have been growing healthy roots daily for almost 5 years. When storms of financial insecurity or the winds of emotional turmoil come I feel a shudder and I cling to the strong, healthy earth in which I am growing my roots. I have a strong support system, accountability and a commitment to honesty that firmly hold my roots in place. I watch out for the worms of fear, resentment, apathy and contentment. They can weaken my support and damage my growth. If that happens I am vulnerable.
I used to say that certain personal catastrophes would knock down my tree but whereas a limb might be bruised by death, loss or illness, strong roots will support me if I keep them healthy.
THANK YOU again for bringing this topic forward.
Jane~
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Great post! Thanks for reminding us that it’s a long process… sometimes I forget and get dicouraged when I can’t stick to my food plan. But it’s all part of the process and identifying the issues around food is important. Great analogy with the tree roots!
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I’m trying! Baby steps. Today I made a breakthrough and realized that I crave company, and that’s when I turn to food when I’m alone… hence why I am currently hitting up the blogosphere
Internet friends are awesome!
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