Culled from Sparkpeople

Monday, October 13, 2014

This blog is from Debra of Sparkpeople. Her blog was featured today and I loved it.

In my weight loss journey, there are lots of places my head can be. It might be buried in the sand because I don’t want to know what I know. It might be up some other part of my anatomy because I want to do self destructive things to soothe myself or to lose weight. But the most dangerous place my head can be is buried is in the past thinking about the things I should have eaten, not eaten, done, not done, the missed opportunities, the wasted effort, the lost years, etc. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. 

In accounting, when there are no other entries that will be made to an amount, a double line is drawn to show that the tally is final. The past is like that. No amount of anguish, hand-wringing, fat-shaming screeds or other maneuvers can change what happened then. No anger, resentment or instant replaying can change it. No obsession about it, devotion to it or anxious preservation of it can change it. It’s done.

Not that the past is no good. To the contrary, it can be a goldmine of information, just like that final journal entry. You can’t add to it, subtract from it or change it, but you can profit from understanding what the number means. The past is like that: you can learn from it even though you can’t change it. That’s why the 12-Step groups quote Benjamin Dover:



A necessary element of the weight loss journey for me is to fully realize the past and let it be. I don’t have to let it go, I just have to let it be what it was. The capacity to “let be” is an important part of my weight loss plan. Without it, I am chained in a way that prevents me from moving forward. I’m drawing the double line.