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My wife gets so mad at me when I say “just decide” and yet that is often truly the right answer.
Just Decide
What can you “just decide”?
- Lose weight.
- Make behavioural changes.
- Love your partner.
- Maybe even go to church!
The reality is that you can “just decide” to change almost anything that you can control. You may have physical issues that are causing problems and you can’t just decide and make them go away. What you can do is decide to make what changes you can make to alter your particular circumstance and possibly affect the final outcome.
My Personal Experience
People recently have asked what I did to lose 50 pounds. Funny that they only noticed recently. Thirty pounds came off in the first year after I made the decision to reduce my weight. It took three years to lose the next 10 and the last year to lose the final 10. Each spurt was the result of an occurrence that triggered enough fear to get back on track.
Almost 5 years ago, my mother passed away due to complications related to diabetes and heart disease. In the preceding year and a half, we had almost lost our home and our son was diagnosed with cancer. He passed away at the age of 23, three months after my mother.
My wife and a friend had been concerned that I was showing signs of diabetes myself. Just after Mom died, my friend had us over for dinner and he tested my sugar. He called me at home the next day and said he didn’t want to scare my wife but insisted I get to the doctor right away. My sugar was at 33.3, that’s as high as the meter went which meant we really didn’t know the true reading. I procrastinated almost a week and decided to go to a clinic. The doctor sent me to emergency not understanding how I walked in on my own. I spent 11 hours in emergency on intravenous fluids and receiving insulin shots. My poor wife was at the cancer hospital during that time with my son who would pass away four months later.
I made a decision. I didn’t want to die an early death if there was something I could do to change that. In order to change the potential dependency on insulin shots and hope to delay the onset of heart disease, I needed to start with changing my diet and losing weight. Within two weeks, I lost almost 10 pounds and had my sugar levels down to between 8 and 10. The doctor told me that if she put me on insulin at that point, it would likely cause problems with fluctuating sugar and potentially dangerously low levels. She told me that she would like to see me at an ideal weight of 184 pounds.
Within that next 12 months, I had dropped from 235 pounds to just around 200. I did this by deciding to change my eating habits and even more importantly, walk about 3 kilometres in 20-25 minutes. If I didn’t raise my core body temperature, I didn’t walk far or fast enough! Then, I fell off the wagon. I rarely walked and started eating late in the evening. I was back up to 215 pounds and the sugar was out of whack. I “just decided” once again to change my habits back to what worked the year before.
My weight went back down and hovered around 190 pounds. Then back up to 200. Another decision. Now I’m at about 185 pounds and people have noticed. They say I look younger!
What will you decide?
Everyone has different goals and different factors to consider. The challenge is identifying what you are willing to change. It all starts with Slight Edge decisions. Don’t try to make wholesale changes that you won’t follow through with. Start small and add a little bit at a time. Just like your savings plans, the benefits will multiply faster and faster over time. All of a sudden you will realize your goal and wonder how you ever did it.
How did I lose 50 pounds? I just decided.
What will you decide?
Make it a great day,
Barry
P.S. What am I thankful for today? I’m thankful for family and friends who care enough to push a little. I’m thankful for people who support my efforts. I’m thankful for God’s intervention through them.
What are you thankful for today?
Please share ...
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