Day 203

This week, dear friends, we’ve faced bacon laden pizza and Texas Roadhouse. We’ve eaten fried onion blossoms, donut bits, delicious rolls and even had an alcoholic raspberry flavored beverage.

And guess what?

We’re still standing!!

Now, I know what some of you are going to say.

“Jaime,” you say, “That sounds nice and all, but honestly, all we’ve done is stay at the same exact weight we were this time last week. That’s not a triumph. That’s stasis!”

And, you know what?

I know.

I understand how a lack of forward progress can feel like no progress at all. I understand how, with the clock ticking to our next deadline, the niggling fear that a loss of momentum will prove to be our undoing can worm away at our resolve and erode what little satisfaction we’ve hoarded.

And I’m not going to lie to you. We are facing an enemy y much bigger than ourselves – a biological need to eat, swollen and bloated with psychological ties to food equaling comfort and good food being a reward for good people. Plus, we are particularly vulnerable right now. We’re wading in a rough time and we’re denying ourselves the Ben & Jerry’s we’re supposed to be allowed as a coping mechanism.

And make no mistake - our enemy owns this territory. It’s claimed this battle ground with a society that calls women over size 11 “big girls” and names the men who don’t believe such women are hideous as “chubby-chasers”.  (I’m looking at you “Repo Man!”)

But, at the end of the day, we don’t exist in a world where existence is all that matters. We exist in a world where our actions shape our character and our beings for an eternity. We decide what sort of people we will be. We decide how to face the challenges of our lives, from the horrifically shattering to the stupidly mundane. And the effort it takes does not go out into the void. It does not mean nothing. It returns to us and shapes us into who we are.

And we decide whether we allow a holding action to become a route.

We decide when a failure is a failure, or when it’s deciding that sharing food with a friend, without complication or guilt, is greater than the priority of seeing the scale drop that day.

You cannot advance unless you've first stood your ground.

And we’ve stood.