Question: What's your trick? Answer: Love :)

I've lost weight over the past 2 years...a lot...80 pounds and still going.  It was last winter that the people around me began to take notice.  I get asked a lot "how do you do it?" or "what's your trick?"  The answer I usually give is that I do not diet.  The real answer, though, is much more complex and yet very simple at the same time.  It took years and years of work and a lot of pain, but I finally did it.  The trick is:  I learned to love myself.  That's it.  That is all there is to it.  Yet, it is this one thing that can be so difficult for so many of us.

Loving ourselves should be as natural as breathing.  Throughout our lives, though, we are inundated with messages that being who we are is not good enough.  I lived most of my life wishing I was different until, over the past several years, I discovered how truly magnificent it is to be me.  You see, when I finally accepted and loved me for who I am, things just happened naturally.  I no longer feel the need to feed that 'empty' space.  I don't feel the need to medicate the pain away with food.  I simply use food for what it was intended...as fuel for my body.  No food is off limits ever.  I don't disparage myself when I might have had a little too much.  Those things are punishment.

When I opened up that door, I also began to remember and also find new things that I love to do, and that keeps me active.

And the emotional pain that I used to cover up with food...there is still pain and sadness now and then...I don't try to numb it  with food, avoid it with sleep, or try to force it to go away.  I don't try to over analyze it.  I just simply recognize it, feel it, and know it will pass eventually.  It is not fun, but it is far better than how I used to cope.

Loving self:  It is simple, yet the one of the most difficult things I have ever done.