I picked up the book Joy’s Life Diet the other day at the bookstore. Roy and I are featured on page ten as a couple who lost weight together. However it wasn’t our story that I enjoyed the most. It was the story of Patti Carlson who has lost 125 pounds. In the book she states that she started on December 12 and her friends asked her why she didn’t wait until after the holidays. I love her response…”I planned to do this for the rest of my life, so it didn’t matter when I started.”

Is it any wonder this woman has been successful at weight loss? She didn’t see this as a diet…something you do and then you’re done and you go back to the old ways. She saw it as a way of life.

I started with much the same attitude on February 2, 2002. I didn’t choose that day for any particular reason except that I was ready. (I didn’t make the 2/2/02 connection until just recently.) I knew going into it that I was going to be doing all of this for the rest of my life, so it didn’t matter when started either…just as it didn’t matter to Patti.

And you know what? It’s FREEING to look at it that way. When you’re “on a diet” it’s so limiting. There’s always this “I can deprive myself now because later on I’ll be able to eat the things I like again!” You feel like you’re on this Bataan Death March trudge to weight loss. It’s not fun, it isn’t exciting, and it sure as heck isn’t something you want to do for the rest of your life!

But when you do go into it with the freedom of lifestyle change, you don’t stop eating everything you enjoy. You figure out how to work it into your lifestyle. You CAN have your cake and eat it too. You just can’t eat the entire cake at one setting and expect to meet your goals.

So as I got further and further into my journey with this idea that this is for life, I found it almost like a game. I had this budget every day that I could use however I wanted to. If that meant that Friday night I’m going to Cheesecake Factory for dinner, I could work my calories so that I could have a meal I would enjoy without feeling deprived…I can even *gasp* split a piece of cheesecake with my husband! Because it was for life, if I messed up on Monday I could work to get back on track on Tuesday and undo the damage by Friday. Find yourself out at a meal and everyone wants burgers? No problem! A burger today, a healthy day tomorrow, and maybe an extra 30 minutes of a workout.

That is what life is all about…it’s about learning and adapting and making things work FOR you not against you. It’s about adopting not only an “I can” attitude, but an “I am” atittude. It’s about having your cake, eating it too, and still maintaining a healthy active lifestyle.

It’s the new year so it is an EXCELLENT time to start…but this year do it differently. Think back on every New Years Resolution you’ve made and ask yourself which ones succeeded and which ones failed. Evaluate what made some a success, and what made you not successful at others. Take those lessons with you into 2009 so that in 2010 you will NOT be making the resolution to “finally get the weight off.”