What is wrong with this picture? I am losing to a piece of food, taking orders from a snack.

I will start my food plan today. I don’t want to wait. I won’t say that I’ll start eating right tomorrow. How many times have I said that before? Saying tomorrow is saying I won’t do it today. THIS is the tomorrow I spoke of yesterday. I would never run a business the way I’ve treated my own body and my weight problem. If this were something that I needed to do for my children or someone I loved, I would have done it a long time ago. So, I will do it for someone I love – Myself.

Today, I will start living as never before. I’ll remember that this begins in the supermarket. I will buy the foods that support my success and avoid the ones that sabotage it. If I don’t buy it, I don’t eat it. If it’s not in my kitchen, it’s not on my hips.

There’s not a single food that I’ll see today that I haven’t seen or tasted before. I have seen it all, I’ve tasted it all, and it hasn’t made me happy; it has only made me fat. But, this is not a mountain to climb. It is just a few patterns to master. I have overcome a great deal in my life. I can learn to manage six meals a day. That is my only challenge to buy a lifetime of being trim. What’s the worst that can happen to me? I will just see or smell a food that I’d like to eat. It will not be new. I have seen and tasted it before. A food temptation is simply a feeling; it’s not a command. It lasts about 4 to 12 minutes. If I break the eye contact and say ‘No way!’ it will pass. Isn’t thin worth 4 to 12 minutes of standing up to a feeling?

None of my clothes fit. I can’t bear to look at a picture of myself or in the mirror. I’m not taking care of my health or the quality of my life. What I have done in the past has not worked. That’s why I will do it a new way using new strategies. If it seemed difficult in the past, it was probably because I didn’t have the right strategy. I knew what I wanted – to be trim – but I didn’t have a plan to get there and stay there. Strategy gives me the road map that makes it possible. It’s not just knowing what to eat and what not to eat. It’s knowing how to do it, how to want to do it, and how to make it easy to do. That’s what strategy is about, and that’s what I’m working on, one day at a time.

I will follow my food plan every day, with one ‘planned’ free meal a week. I will only eat in restaurants as a reward to myself and at planned times. I will not make ‘excuses’ to deviate from my plan.

If I have an upsetting situation, I will say to myself, “I have an uncomfortable feeling, but it is not about food.” Eating over it will not make me happy; it will only make me heavy. Even if I can’t solve the problem or change the person who is upsetting me, by not eating, I break a major pattern that has made me heavy. Maybe I can’t do anything about other problems in my life, but my weight is one area that I have the power to change. And I will use that power.

In a world where there is cancer, and AIDS, and homelessness, what’s the big deal if I say no thanks to unplanned food when can say YES to being thin? Did I come this far in life to take orders from food?

I deserve to be trim. I deserve to succeed with this. I deserve to be in control of my life with food.