some day love with find me in the rough.

How to be happy while losing weight.

I wish this was a comprehensive list, a fool-proof way on how to find inner peace when you're in the middle of a very complicated process. It's totally not, and if that's what you're looking for I will absolutely fail to meet your expectations. But I can tell you with certainty that happiness doesn't start when you reach your goal; happiness is every bit a process the same way that weight loss is. Each day you're a quarter pound skinnier and an ounce happier and if you nurture it you will find one day that these tiny contributions have added up to something grand.

With that being said, here are my thoughts on How to be happy while losing weight.

1. Don't wait for happiness to start. It's not a magical possession that flits in and out of your life, it is a way of being and you have to create it from the ground up. You are probably not ever going to suddenly wake up happy. You don't go from slums/depression/whatever to waking up content, it doesn't appear overnight because it's not something that pops in and pops out at will. If you wake up happy, it's because you decided you were happy.

This morning for me was a happy morning. Some would say that I'm happy because the semester is over and I am feeling relief from being done with finals, but if you ask me, the truth is that I woke up happy this morning because I wanted to be happy. I was happy that the blankets were so warm and smelled so familiar. It really was that simple. If you want to relate this to weight loss, I'm happy in spite of what's going on with the scale these days. It read 2 pounds more than I would like to see, and most people might be disappointed with such a reading, but these two pounds in the grand scheme of things aren't going to make me or break me because I'm still a winner loser and that makes me happy.

2. Do it with purpose. Any purpose. Seriously, anything. Whatever it is, make that your goal. If you want to be happy, find something to motivate you. It can be short-term or long-term or micro-term, just as long as you keep moving forward.

I don't derive any pleasure from what the scale says. The number itself does not make me happy, it's the feeling of accomplishment that I enjoy the most. If I lose a couple of pounds by cutting corners and doing things in unhealthy ways, I do not feel good about it. Weight loss (at least the numbers) should not make you happy because weight loss is not a purpose, it's a consequence of leading a better lifestyle. [Leading a better lifestyle]... THAT's a purpose. Whatever lies between [the brackets] for you, that's what you should be focused on. For me, it's [running]. The weight loss will follow.

3. Look for it everywhere you go. In tiny crevices, in an abandoned project/hobby, in those extra minutes you spend in bed between hitting the snooze button. Happiness isn't necessarily big, it can be found in grand gestures as much as it can be found in the routine and the mundane.

I was thinking that it's less than a month until I see my neurologist again and I weigh exactly five pounds more than I did last time I saw her. FIVE POUNDS. I should be making progress. I thought about how I was disappointed that my weight is not below 200 by now (SO CLOSE, yet so far away) and I imagined my doctor's disappointment when I shared the news with her. And then as I was putting on a pair of skinny jeans in the mirror I realized that they fit MUCH better than they did a month ago and I actually like my silhouette. Not only that, but I'm learning to love my midsection. It's still soft and doughy, but for the first time in my adult life I can see the shape of my skeleton underneath it all. I'm not one to advocate finding happiness in the mirror, but today I found acceptance in a place I never expected, and for that I am happy.

4. Make it your own. Happiness should be something that no one can take from you. If you own your spirit of liveliness, it is important to remember that it is yours to keep and yours to give away.

Every day I carry my pride and my cheer with me, being intimately familiar with all the things it took to get me to this exact moment in time. Strangers, however, don't share my outlook. To the person I bumped into with my "abnormally large ass," I'm sorry you felt the need to point out my "abnormally large ass" and I wish you could have known me a year and a half ago when my ass was much, MUCH bigger. To an outsider, maybe all they can see is the 50 pounds I still have to lose, but that IN NO WAY diminishes the 75 I already lost. I am still a winner, even if you can't see it that way.

5. It doesn't have to cost anything, unless you allow it to. It doesn't matter if your currency is dollars or opportunities, happiness should only cost you what you want it to. Being unhappy shouldn't keep you from doing something you want to do, just like being happy doesn't come from spending money.

I've been thinking that my weight loss slump is because I don't have a New Years trip to Las Vegas motivating me this year. It just wasn't in the cards my bank account balance to make it work and I am bummed. Having LV to look forward to last year gave me serious motivation to work my ass off at the gym, so of course I feel like I need another trip to jump-start my exercise ethic. I'm unhappy that I can't afford Vegas and it's costing me chances to lose weight. There, I said it. But in the vein of "money can't buy happiness" clichés, I can't let money (or my lack thereof) cost me my happiness so I have to find it elsewhere. Like [crafting] and [running] and [that feeling I get when I know I put hard work in and lost weight].

Yeah. All good things.

Whenever I'm feeling particularly down, I ask myself, "Have you done everything you can possibly do in this moment to reach your goals?" If the answer is "yes," then I know my happiness is within reach and the anxiety and frustration and disappointment I feel about not being able to speed up the weight loss process dissipates. Sometimes it is a matter of waiting for time to pass but if you're happy you won't even notice :)