This Is Your Day

Welcome to "Same Old Sh*t" Saturday, where I brush the dust off of old posts and pawn them off as "refurbished". If I wasn't such a nut-job, I'd write more posts like this one...

This is your day.

You’ve got 86,400 seconds to work with and I’d like to encourage you to spend at least a few thousand of them working to make this weight-loss journey you’re on a success.

Yesterday may not have been your best day, but yesterday is dead and gone. Yesterday’s a fading memory, a train that’s long since left the station, a house that’s been boarded up and abandoned.

Today is what’s ahead of you, and it’s a day full of promise and possibility. You can make a positive and lasting change in your life and you can start today. All it takes is attention to the smallest of details. All it takes is being mindful about what you put in your mouth, being attentive to your body’s deep yearning to move. There never seems to be a good time to start, but I say that today’s as good a day as any. Today’s your day to start making your life better.

Tomorrow? We’ll talk about tomorrow tomorrow, but for now, let’s keep our whole and total focus on today. Today’s all we can control, all we can manage, all that we need to worry about for the day’s remaining 86,370 seconds (you’ve already squandered 30 of those precious seconds here… they do have a way of getting away from you, you see).

I started my own journey a little over six months ago, and my big idea was to get through one damn day without screwing up. One day without eating something crappy. One day without grabbing a candy bar out of the vending machine. Try to prove to myself that my car would run–for one day–without food in my mouth. We are so smart, and yet we continue to do such foolish, foolish things.

Some days, especially early in my trek, ended with me counting down those remaining few thousand seconds like a man in prison eyeballing the calendar. “Just get me through the day,” I’d desperately mutter to myself. “Just get me through one more day.”

I’m not going to tell you that changing my set-in-stone mindset wasn’t difficult, that it wasn’t painful. However, I am going to tell you that it got more bearable with time. It got more manageable. It’s still not easy, but it’s a long way from too difficult to manage.

I still end the day with a little quiet reflection of what I accomplished over the past 86,000 and some odd second seconds. And believe me… not screwing up is still a major accomplishment in my book.

I’m not trying to change the world, but I am trying to change myself.

One day at a time.

This day–today–is right here for the taking. I know you, and I know you have the strength and determination to power through a day eating right and doing right. I’m not asking you to do more than you’re capable of and I’m certainly not asking you to do any more than I’m asking of myself.

Let’s get through one good day, and what say we make that day today.