Tuesday is a good day to begin a whole new me.

I'm enjoying one of those mornings that you that are to foreign to even hope for when you start making a change in your life. In four months I have gone for prescription medication abuser, to clean recovering addict. In 2 months and one week I have gone for career smoker, to non-smoker. In 5 weeks I have gone from out of control eating machine to someone that is way more careful with calories and portions and someone that is looking forward to weighing in at the doctors. The time between changes and effects is called "The Meantime". By coming here, and my 12 step group, not to mention the counselors I have that support change, my "meantime" hasn't been all that MEAN. I take my eating just like I do my on going recovery for prescriptions, one day at a time. The only difference is I have to learn to coexist with food. I've been thinking about something I read many moons ago that all people who want change should begin to envision who they want to be and even what they will look like. I've been letting go some of the things I have always associated with the mental image of who I am. My new image of Clinton isn't a smoker. It may sound silly but when I picture who I am, I've always had a cigarette in my hand. My new vision is me with long silver hair. It isn't the most stylish look but it really is a reflection of who I want to be, sort of a "crunchy granola laid back hippy". My new vision of myself does not include a skinny me. My days of chasing skinny...OVAH! I just want to look healthy, wear a waist size I can get at any store, and move without losing my breath. I want to be grateful for my body. I need to be fit for the second act of the Clinton Gandy story. Regardless of anything I have just written, I want to have a peace inside me, where I have ceased fighting any thing/anyone that keeps me from being of real service to others. I've grown past the vanity years and I know beyond all doubt that substance trumps style every time in the end. lol

Any loss on the scale today is a victory in the sense that I had to battle my greatest foe to get the pound off -myself and my small thinking, and years years years of using food as medication. I no longer Starve a cold and Feed a feeling.