It Was Me All Along

I stumbled upon “Can You Stay For Dinner” back in February of 2010.  This was her first comment on my blog:

Can You Stay for Dinner
canyoustayfordinner.comx
canyoustayfordinner@gmail.com
76.28.109.192

Submitted on 2010/02/13 at 2:49 pm

My god I love your creativity with food! I’ve got to try that pizza dough, it looks perfect! Thanks for visiting my blog.

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She was funny, witty, had an awesome writing style and well, she made yummy food!  Not only that, but she’d lost over 130 pounds and had kept it off.  I loved reading about her life.  Fast forward a couple years and I read that she was moving to Costa Rica to write a book!  And that’s probably where I left her.  You know how it goes – out of sight out of mind.  But last week I was thinking about Andie for no particular reason and I went to her blog to find out what was going on in her life.

Well, I found out her book was finished!  I was so excited.  But here’s the deal.  While I was an AVID reader growing up, well, let’s just say it’s probably been a good 10+ years since I read a book cover to cover.  But on our way home from Virginia I downloaded the Kindle app on my tablet, and shelled out the $9.99 to download the book and I finished the whole book on the trip home.  It was wonderful.  I never got to the end of a chapter and thought “I’ll pick this up later” I just kept on wanting to read it.

So half way through, I realized I could highlight passages that spoke to me – duh.  So I will definitely be reading this again.  But here were a few quotes I wanted to share with you today.

Andie was reading a magazine article about a woman who lost 100 pounds and it was the first time she connected to someone who shared her struggle with weight and the grieving associated with eating less.   This person was also a binge eater and she had a sponsor in Overeaters Anonymous that she contacted when she felt herself slipping off the edge of willpower.  The sponsor said “Can you do it today?  Can you make it through today without bingeing?  Just today, and tomorrow we’ll reconsider?”   That’s how she got herself to the gym.  “Can you exercise today Andie?  Not tomorrow, or the next day, not even a month from now. Today?  Eat the best you can, work your plus-sized heart out . . . today”?”

That was her mantra . . . just do the best you can . . . today.  And she did.  But then came the part about maintaining weight loss, which those of you who have done it (Lori, Shelley and Lisa just to name a few right off the top of my head) is that maintaining weight loss takes just as much dedication and thought as it did to get it off in the first place.   Someone she knew told her that losing weight was the easy part, it’s the maintaining that was the hard part.  It made her mad that someone could diminish all the effort it took to lose the weight. “Yes, I get it, I wanted to tell them.  It looks like I’ve just moved into a new home, a very desirable and thin one, and now you’re reminding me that I have to come up with the mortgage payments.  I’m terrified too.  But just so you know, I worked to purchase this house myself, and somehow I’ll figure it out.

Sadly I have to now get ready for work, but was wondering if you followed Andie’s blog and if you’ll read her book.  I am going to contact her to see if I can purchase an autographed copy to give away on the blog, that’s how much I loved this book.

So my question to you today is, “can you exercise today?  Not tomorrow, or the next day, not even a month from now.  Today?”  I got my steps in yesterday, and plan to do the same today.