DAY 32 - TOTAL WEIGHT LOSS 15.6 LBS

Sleep has been a challenge this week. I will be able to get my 6 hours tonight, but more importantly, I have stayed green in the other areas this week with company in town! Huge success! I have to say, I feel very good about that accomplishment!

It is almost unbelievable that I have stayed on track for 32 days. It helps to pray, read my Bible and drink water (a lot of water) early in the morning. Thinking back about all my dieting attempts over the last many years, I have never been this consistent with any plan. I have always "gotten run over by my own wagon" as the bootcamp trainer puts it. Usually this happened on weekends, around holidays, birthdays, when company was in town, when we traveled, when I baked, when I was stressed..... Hmm, I'm starting to see a pattern.

I was exhausted from sabotaging and defeating myself on a regular basis. It feels so much better physically, emotionally and spiritually to consistently practice healthy habits. With each healthy choice I make, I feel stronger and more able to make more healthy choices. I suppose it is a matter of momentum. Positive momentum. Before starting this system, I also had momentum, but it was negative, and it caused my weight to go up and my feelings of self worth to go down.

Even though I felt bad physically at 194 lbs (my heaviest) and 184 (my Green vs Red starting weight), and I didn't like the way I looked squeezed into XL tops and size 14 bottoms, and I really disliked putting on a bathing suit, my bigger problem was how I felt on the inside.

I consider myself to be a relatively capable person who can overcome obstacles and make the best out of a situation. No amount of determination or fortitude could change the unhealthy cycle of "all or nothing" thinking I was accustomed to in the past. Sometimes my "diets" would last for a week or two, sometimes just a day or two and sometimes I had been flattened by my own wagon at 8:30 in the morning on Day 1!

Eventually this type of self- destructive, "being run over by my own wagon" mentality turned into negativity, hopelessness (when it came to losing weight), anger, frustration, low self esteem, depression and in general feeling like a failure. I didn't feel like a failure because I was overweight, I felt like a failure because I set out everyday with the goal of eating healthy and taking care of myself and I continually failed at achieving that goal.

I'm 32 days into this journey, and instead of looking at the scale or how "perfectly" I have eaten to determine my success, I just have to look at 32 days worth of cards where the vast majority of goals are GREEN. And even better is the REDS DO NOT represent failures, they represent areas that I need to adjust so I can be the healthiest person, wife, mom, daughter, sister and friend that I can be. Now THAT kind of thinking is definitely MOMENTUM headed in the RIGHT direction!