Fear

This morning I printed my chart and planned my meals and snacks.  This afternoon I came home and ate my snack and started dinner.  I plan to go downstairs to exercise in a little while.  The sun is shining, the snow is melting, it is light in the morning when I leave for work, and some brave birds are singing when I wake up in the morning.  Despite all of these good things -- when I think of losing weight today I feel a surge of hope and a riptide of panic.  Why?  What is it about succeeding that has me terrified today?  I know how good I will feel.  For me its not so much about how I look, as it is about accomplishing a goal that I never expected to accomplish.  No, I lie - it's not about looking good to OTHERS it's about looking good to MYSELF.  It's about being satisfied with how I look and who I am.  I think this is the essence of my fear.  I think that perhaps if I lost 20 pounds it wouldn't be enough for me to be happy with myself.  If I lost 40 pounds it wouldn't be enough to be happy with myself.  If I lost 60 pounds and weighed what I did when I got married I don't think I would be happy with myself.  Because back then when I was thin I was never happy with how I looked.  Clearly, the first thing I need to learn  is to be happy in my skin.  I know I'm improving in this area but I still have a long way to go. 

As I look at that paragraph I see 2 issues here.

Learning to be happy with who I am.
Learning to be happy with how I look.

I know I'm making progress on both of these issues but I still have a long way to go.  I need to continue to read and explore the issues but for today, since I have identified my fears I can ponder them for a while.