Are you living with regrets about not starting your weight loss program sooner, or regretting fumbles along the way?

Are you regretting regaining all of the weight that you previously lost, and are now stuck in a pattern of emotional eating because you feel so bad about the regain?

Do you find yourself spending more time with your regrets instead of taking positive action such as cooking some meals with healthy, whole foods, and completing your exercise sessions?

Well, I’ve been there too, and today I’d like to recommend a post to you by Wendy Piersall titled, “I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Regrets!“. If you haven’t visited her blog before, she is a wonderful lady who writes with honesty and integrity. Her blog is called eMoms At Home, but don’t let that deter you if you’re not an at home mom (or a mom at all), because her writing is for anyone.

In her post, Wendy writes about her former lack of self-respect and ambition, both of which I can relate to. When it comes to weight loss, I have written previously about how important it is to feel good about yourself, no matter how much you weigh or how often you are overeating. If you use food to try to make yourself feel good, and you feel bad about yourself most of the time, guess what you’re going to do?

Regretting your past (or current) lack of ambition to lose weight can also get you stuck in a quagmire. You want to lose weight but you feel bad because you’ve lacked the motivation to do so, and maybe you are still seeking motivation today. Continuing to feel bad about lost time is another way that you can end up not only dragging yourself down, but also gaining more weight if you are turning to food to cover up or comfort those feelings.

Strive today to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. So what if you have eaten yourself up to an uncomfortable weight, you can still love yourself for all of your positive traits today. Overweight does not erase them. You could get out a piece of paper or your journal and make a list of every single trait and physical feature that you like about yourself, focusing on these items instead of the parts of you that you currently don’t like.

Now, concerning the past and your previous lack of motivation to lose weight, you cannot go back and do anything about that today, no matter how much you are regretting lost time. In present time, if you still don’t feel any motivation to lose weight, it may be that you need to sit with that feeling and surrender to it. This has helped me several times when I had absolutely no motivation for a particular task or subject, including having a lack of motivation to lose weight.

Regretting the past is a sure-fire way to be stuck in the present moment. The only time that you have is now, and if you want to make a change, now is the time to do so. You cannot go back no matter how much you would like to. Additionally, if you had truly wanted to take action to lose weight in the past and you had the ability to, wouldn’t you have done so? I think that you would have.

Regardless of how much you weigh today, you can begin a new life now and make some changes today. What you do today is building your future. Right now, you are in the past of your own future (neat, huh?). You have the ability to take action now and create a past that you can look back on in your future and be proud of. Make it a good one!