Changing

I have started to address my weight. I am going to eat better and walk. I started today. I am hoping that if I announce this in cyberspace, it will have a greater impact on my willpower.

The irony is that there is never any good place to start. The heavier you get, the more you have to lose to get to your ideal weight. The ideal weight never needs to change. What increases is the weight you need to lose to get to your ideal weight. The longer you wait, the more pounds you put on, and the more you have to lose. Another factor is that you also an increasing number of years in which you pursued poor eating habits, and those habits are hard to break.

I thought about that in terms of changing other things about your life, like habits, or unhealthy thinking. I have begun to wonder if the longer you wait to make those changes, the less likely you are to change because it is another year of a habit, another year of incorrect thinking. Our worldview may have increasingly solidified, making us more set in their ways.

There are people I care about who refuse to change some of the things in their lives, even though those things aren’t working out well for them. They blindly plunge ahead continuing to wound those around them. When confronted by change they become belligerent. I have gotten old enough to let go of the anger and frustration, but the older I get, the less I think things will work out.

It appears that each year brings more dependence on the habits and thinking of the past, and less chance for considering change. Thank God that one of the things that comes with age, for me anyway, is an increasing sense of tolerance.