Love Your Body: New Year, New Me?

You know, I've never really been much of a New Year's Resolution sort of girl. It's not that I don't love the idea of making lofty goals for myself, it's just that I don't have the patience to wait until January 1st (or December 31st, depending on how you do it) to make these plans. (On a tangent, I should go back through my archives sometime to figure out exactly how many Grand Plans I've launched and abandoned. Or perhaps not.) With my current focus centered on the idea of moderation, it seems unwise to change course now in terms of creating a New Plan for Me, but still...

There's something about the sight of a blank 2008 calendar that makes me feel optimistic. I've got 364-1/2 days laid out in front of me with nothing written on them. There's nothing to regret, nothing to beat myself up for, and virtually unlimited opportunity to make something wonderful happen. Those days are going to pass into History no matter what I do - I have no control over that, but I do have control about how I meet what Life brings to me. I want less churn and more Grace in 2008 and so I give you: The 6-1/2 Principles By Which I Hope to Live My Life

1. I am fine just as I am. I am happy, I am smart, I am a good person, and I have enough people in my life who love and care for me. Losing weight will not change anything in my life other than the size of my waist and the clothes that I wear, nor does it need to.

2. I have Diabetes and I need to make myself a priority in my life. Not necessarily the very first priority, but I need to be toward the top of the list. (Loving my body is a big part of this.)

3. Loving my body is not an all or nothing deal. I can get more exercise without having to be a Diet Grinch. (Having an eating disorder doesn't mean I can't love my body in other ways.)

4. There is no such thing as "Success" or "Failure" in loving my body, it's a process.

5. I will not allow the weight loss success of friends or acquaintances to make me feel competitive or threatened. I have the option of shifting into weight loss mode any time I want (not that it would be easy, but still...) and playing the martyr or victim, even inside my head, is counterproductive.

6. Not being perfect is OK. Actually, it's more than OK, it's reproducible (which perfection is not).

And Principle 6-1/2 is that I commit to posting here most days about how I'm feeling and what I've been doing. In order to help me keep this one, I'm permanently turning off the comments so that I don't censor myself for fear of being a boring read. I long ago got rid of my site stats, so I have no idea who - if anyone - reads me on a daily basis, and that's probably a good thing. Reading about my self doubt and such probably won't be fascinating reading but I need to get it out of my head and this is my journal, so that's where I'll be going for a while. I hope some of you will want to come along and totally understand that there will be some who do not.

Enough for now. I'm hungry and it's getting dark and there are still 7-1/2 hours left in the day...what fun can I have today?

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