I Changed After 25 Years of Obesity; You Can, Too
Jodi Davis
| 4 min read
Patience is key to any lasting effort to lose weight.
As many of you may know, I lived the obese life for 25 long years. I know what it’s like to wish to be thin every single waking moment of your existence. I know how it feels to be seen in public, know that you don’t “fit in” because of your size and pray to God that someday you will. I know several of the thoughts that we — the obese — commonly share that no other normal-sized person can even begin to understand. Because I care about all of you who are currently living the obese life, I have decided to focus on “living the obese life” in my upcoming posts. I want you to face the fact that you can change all of those feelings. Don’t shake your head no; I didn’t believe it either. But I changed after 25 years, and so can you.
First of all, I want to tell you that there is no perfect diet. I don’t even like to type that word let alone say it. I’m not here today to focus on diets because after two and a half decades of trying them, I know that they don’t work. What they really do is make you impatient; you just want those dumb diets to end… now!
I have learned that being impatient is a key factor behind why so many weight-loss attempts fail. We become annoyed because the weight loss we are striving for is not immediate. We don’t want any delays, we want results right away — but not just a fraction of results, we want it all, instantly. We are unwilling to wait for many things nowadays. But guess what? There are just some things that you have to wait for (weight loss is one of them) no matter what you demand.
Obtaining your high school diploma is a good example. You probably didn’t enjoy waiting 13 years to receive it, and given the choice, you probably would have gladly accepted it during your early adolescent years. But in reality, you had to attend school and work towards that diploma — no shortcuts. The same goes for any degree in college. My daughter just received her bachelor’s degree after four years. Would she have liked to receive it years sooner? Of course. But she couldn’t simply bypass those four years and all the work it took to earn it.
Starting a family takes quite awhile also. I know from my own experience that I did not enjoy waiting for the arrival of my first child; I wanted to hold my infant child right away. Obviously I knew that I needed to wait in order for my baby to develop correctly and that those nine months are just “part of it.” For each one of my pregnancies, I became extremely impatient. There were days when I was unwilling to wait, but nature forced me to be patient. I had no other choice other than to accept it, and the final outcome was worth the wait in gold!
That is exactly how I look at the 16 months it took me to lose 162 pounds: WORTH THE WAIT IN GOLD! It took time, something that I didn’t allow for those preceding 25 years. I accepted that patience was needed if I was to succeed. I faced the fact that “immediate” was not an option, that thinking the weight could be gone instantaneously was not a reality. In my dream, maybe … but I wasn’t sleeping.
It took me years to comprehend the concept of patience. I’m sharing this with you so you can learn to understand this key factor, too. It’s something you must learn to accept.
Is impatience stopping you from achieving your weight-loss goal? Let me know in the comment area below. Being here to help is why I do what I do … for you.
Photo credit: Martin Gommel
