I was mortified after my first week of eating healthy. How am I going to do this for the long term? Eating right is too hard. Tracking what I eat is tedious and time consuming. How am I going to succeed?

After the second week, my feelings went from mortified to concerned. Am I going to be able to do this for the long term? Eating right takes a certain education and understanding. What is the best way to track what I eat? How am I going to fare over the weekend?

After my third week, my feelings went from concerned to encouraged. I am going to try and keep doing this cause I’ve gained a little knowledge about food and my body. I think I understand the best way to track what I eat and understand cause and effect. I learned that if I ate ‘x’, then ‘y’ would happen.

Now, entering my 7th month of weight loss, my feeling is one of enlightened. I AM DOING THIS! This is my life. Tracking calories is quick and easy. Knowing what and when to eat is easy. Preparing food for those times takes minutes. I already know the effects certain foods will have and now I avoid them. Knowing what to avoid, while it took time to learn, is essential and is easy now that I have the knowledge.

Losing weight actually gets easier over time. It gets easier everyday. You learn what to eat, what not to eat, when to eat and when not to eat. You learn what certain foods do to you. You learn what emotions make you want to eat. You learn what and when to avoid foods and situations. You learn other ways to deal with emotions. Equipped with this learning, education and understanding, losing weight gets easier.

It take some time to learn and I fell down quite a few times in my education. But everytime I got back up, took away a lesson and kept going. Its easy to read “its gets easier” and say “yeah right, I want ice cream at 11pm”. But just know, if you can keep on track and learn things along the way, losing weight gets easier.

I told myself that I am making changes to habits that I have taken a lifetime to create. They won’t go away overnight. However, once my new habits take hold, it will be second nature. Just like, not too long ago,  it was second nature for me to pull into a drive through and gorge. New habits take time to develop, but as time goes by, it gets easier!