I have a confession. I find it very difficult to write when I feel like I’m failing. So, the date of my last post should be a good indication of how I’ve been feeling lately. I feel like I have lost all control of my health. Even though I know how to lose weight, I know what works, and I know what I am capable of, I feel like I get fatter every day. I have a good week, I lose a couple pounds, I follow it up with a bad week and gain them back, and repeat the same cycle over and over and over again. As a result, I’m not gaining any ground so I get more and more discouraged and it gets harder and harder to try.

The distance between me and my ideal weight is enough to make me want to crawl in a hole and die. It’s so overwhelming that it seems impossible. But a friend, the one and only Patrick Allmond, has asked me more than once over the past couple of weeks what my fitness goals are. At first it was what my plan was for exercise last week. This week it was a suggestion to blog my goals and revisit them at the end of the week. Don’t tell him, but he has really had my wheels turning ever since that first question, and I have come to a very important conclusion.

I have no attainable goals.

That doesn’t mean that my ultimate weight loss goal isn’t attainable at all, but it isn’t attainable right now. What I need are smaller goals, reasonable goals that I can meet and feel as though I’m accomplishing things that are leading me in the right direction, little things that, in the end, will culminate in me reaching that ultimate goal that seems so unreachable now.

Exercise? I had no plan. I haven’t exercised in months. Mostly because I am not able to walk the brisk three miles I could when I was at my lowest weight. I don’t want to be reminded of my failure. Fitness goals? Duh. To lose another 100lbs. That’s what I did the last time I succeeded at this, so I haven’t allowed myself to see any point in between.

No wonder I keep blowing this.

Patrick already had my thoughts swirling, when my accountability partner (Thank God for her!) said to me today that she didn’t want to obsess over past mistakes or the fact that she has so far to go, or that she’s not as far along as she’d hoped to be at this point. I realized that is precisely what I’m doing, and it’s the very thing that’s keeping me from moving on. Everyone in this town watched me walk my way to a 110lb weight loss just a few years ago. I’ve been so ashamed about gaining it all back that I didn’t want to walk again and let them see how fat I am. The Weight Watchers leaders I had back then watched me lose that weight in exactly one year, with only one minor gain during that entire process. I quit walking into those meetings as soon as I gained a few pounds because I was embarrassed for them to see I had failed. I have literally gone into hiding because of my own shame, and, in turn, have actually made the whole situation worse.

I can’t do that anymore. So today, I started fresh. It doesn’t matter that I have lost and regained the same pounds 5 times, it only matters that I am on a journey to lose them again. It doesn’t matter that everyone in town who sees me walk down their street may be inside discussing how sad it is that I’ve let myself go again, it only matters that I am out there walking.

It doesn’t matter that I can’t power through a quick three miles. What matters is the one mile I did power through today. Because it’s one more mile than I conquered yesterday, and it’s one mile in the right direction.