Sometimes you gotta stand back and look at the big picture...

I weighed in today. I lost 2.6 pounds. That brings me to a total of 4.8 since starting back on plan. Its been 4 or 5 weeks and I've only lost 4.8. For about two years I've been going off and on WW depending on what food I felt like eating each day. I haven't seen the scale go down much and I've been content with it. I've gained and lost the same 4 pounds over and over again. Someone in my meeting tonight said something that made me look at the big picture.

I have completely changed since my first WW meeting in November 2001. At that meeting I was about 240 pounds. Now I'm 167.8. That is 72.2 pounds total lost. I haven't gained it back. Sometimes I forget that. WW may have given me the tools to help me change my way about eating but in reality, it taught me to learn why I eat. I'm one of those people who eat when their tired or hungry. Its game on when I'm stressed. I think I mentioned before I was in a bad accident in August of 2000. I blame a lot of things on that accident. My 65-70 pound weight gain, my attitude, my personality. It was a life changing event. But what WW has taught me is that no matter how bad things can get, turning to food is not going to change anything. It may be a comfort for the moment but in the big picture, the eventual weight gain added to all the other stress. I know now that the accident was not the cause of my issues. I had plenty of other stuff going on at that point in my life and the year following. But, I didn't know how to deal with that overall stress.

Its been over seven years since the accident. I'm still not an expert in dealing with stress. I've had quite a lot of it over the past 3 years. And it wasn't til tonight that I realized that I haven't gained. There's that 4 pounds I keep gaining and losing, but I didn't gain 72 pounds. I have learned to control my emotions and obviously do a better job of handling stress. There's something to be said for that. Its easy to b*tch and complain about the here and now but I think we all forget to stand back and take a look at the big picture to see how far we've come....whether its WW, some sort of addiction, relationships, work, school, etc.