Beginnings Are The Easiest Part

Everything is easy in the beginning. The first hour of a twelve-hour drive isn't bad at all. Your first piano lesson isn't too painful. And the first week of your diet is also easy.

If you have ten pounds to lose, the first pound or two come off without too much trouble. If you have a hundred pounds to lose, the first ten or even twenty pounds might be pretty quick to come off. If you have 600 pounds to lose, the first 60 pounds are easy.

In the beginning, everyone is super psyched. It's easy to be psyched when you're just getting started. The diet (or the drive or the piano) feels like something new and exciting. You love your new cookbooks and your new scale! You can't wait to get up in the morning and see how much weight you've magically lost overnight. Every day you are lighter! Meal planning, shopping and cooking don't feel like chores. Everything sparkles when it is new.

But beginnings don't last.

And the middle is the the slog. Once you get past the first 1-2 pounds (or the first 10-20) you hit the hard part. This is when lots of folks give up. The new diet is no longer new. You get on the scale every morning and find you've lost NOTHING. You might even fluctuate and gain a pound or two here and there. You're still doing everything right, but now you're not getting the results. It's frustrating. You might get sick of the stuff you've been eating. Salads are getting boring. Shakes are tasting terrible. 

Sure, you could give up. Throw in the towel. Be a quitter. Loads of people quit their diets every day. Plenty of people break their promises to themselves and to their loved ones. You could be one of them.

Or you could stay strong. Stay the course. Recommit every single day to your goal.

Yes, losing weight can be a long, boring, arduous, annoying, frustrating process. Just like life! Anything worth having is hard to get. An education. A happy marriage. A well-trained dog. Nothing worth having comes easily, without some work. You might need to sweat and push yourself and struggle and get angry and cry and throw a temper tantrum at the mall like a tired toddler. This is all part of the process. It's all okay, as long as you don't give up.

Keep going!!!