As my goal gets closer and closer I have found that I need to quit beating myself up about regrets that I have regarding the weight that I lugged around for THIRTY YEARS! I want to be DONE with "USED-TO-BEs" and be able to move forward to the new me. Here are the regrets that I have that I'm going to TRY to banish from my thoughts...forever!
1) Weighing 100 pounds more than I did on my wedding day
2) Weighing MORE than my husband who is 1/2 foot taller than I am
3) Letting myself stop caring about how I looked
4) Not exercising for TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
5) Being satisfied with putting myself last all the time
6) Looking a lot older than I really was
7) Realizing that I probably will not live as long because I was morbidly obese for so many years
8) Having loose skin because I stretched my skin out by being FAT for SO LONG
9) Varicose vein problems made worse due to weight
10) Thinking I looked GREAT in size 26 jeans
There are probably more that I will think of later on, but those are my TOP TEN REGRETS.
knowing what I needed to do and not sticking with it. I have gained and lost over and over again throughout my life. I regret not coming to terms with this problem long ago. However, I am tossing the regrets away and realizing that I can only control my choices today and tomorrow.
Okay, you guys are probably going to think I'm full of crap, but the fact is that I have always refused to regret anything about my life because whatever choices I've made, I have learned from. Some lessons just took longer to learn than others such as eating lots of sugary desserts will add pounds no matter how good it tastes.
I try really, really hard to always live in the moment and if I do look back on something, I find a way to do it fondly. I've always lived by this motto, but it is more difficult to do that when thinking about being overweight for so long. But on the flip side of that coin, a lot of really awesome things have happened to me in past years...things I would never, ever trade. Would I have enjoyed them more if I had been smaller? Maybe? Definately? I don't know, but I do know that if I look at the past and measure how good it was in pounds, it's going to take away from some wonderful moments and I so don't want to do that.
If I could do it all over again, knowing what I know now, would I have changed the way I eat and view food sooner? Sure. Absolutely. But I can't do it all over and all I have right now is today, so that is where I'm focused.
Cheryl, you and everyone else here has achieved so much; some of us in pounds and others of us just by being here and trying to be accountable. Don't waste anymore time wishing or regretting that you had done something sooner, because it is wasted energy. Get out there now and do all those things you couldn't do before! Live!
Oh gosh, so many regrets. Luckily I don't think about them too much, cause when I do, it can get very emotional for me. What a big idiot I was. Just a few:
- That I gave up the chance to have a great time with my kids. That I cheated them of sooo much by just not being able to do ordinary things. We didn't take trips because of this, go to the park, I didn't take them swimming. Oh and so many more things. I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry for this.
- I cheated my husband of the woman he married. And he stuck with me. And never complained. He's finally beginning to get me back. He's so grateful. I can tell.
- I allowed my poor parents to worry about me and my health. Like they didn't have enough to worry about.
- I regret not caring enough about myself to do better, to be better.
- I regret getting so fat and then staying so fat for so long.
- I regret putting my children's mother at risk for horrible diseases. How totally irresponsible of me.
- I regret abusing myself.
- I regret not getting it together earlier. A lot earlier. What an absolute waste. I regret that I wasted sooo many years being soooo miserable. I will never, ever get those years back.
I do have regrets, about all my fears and the things I didn't do, but I really appreciated Kimberly's post too. I don't know if it does me a lot of good to continue to feel regretful about the things I can't change. Like she said, I made those choices for a reason. And regrets may just weight me down...
So maybe it does make sense to learn from these regrets and use the feelings to help us down our own paths...