I don't wake in a good mood every morning.
Some days, it takes a lot of work to develop a positive attitude.
I'm successful at weight-loss and maintenance of that weight-loss,
and overall, I'm a fairly positive person,
but there are times when I feel sad and low.

Turning my mind toward the positives in my life,
doesn't cause me to escape negative feelings,
it just keeps them from hanging around as long.

I"ve found that sometimes the fear of a feeling,
with a frantic attempt to immediately escape from it,  
is actually worse than the underlying feeling that I'm afraid of.

Feelings happen...no matter what...and it's okay to feel every one.
I've learned that one feeling will soon be replaced by a different one.
Just experience the wave of feeling...good or bad...
let it surface in yourself, ride it out, and then let it go.

 I like this quote by a member of a forum I frequent:

"Weight loss is not your sole achievement in life.
You are not just your weight loss.

You have worth as a person,
because of your mind & your feelings
& your relationships & activities.

The weight loss is not like a lucky winning streak
that you have to strain to keep up
& you are a complete failure if you eat.

Also, it's okay to feel black despair & sorrow & loneliness.
What you don't want to do is to eat when you feel like this.
You can shove all the food you want into the black hole
& that will still not fill it up.

Sometimes you just have to ride out the wave, white-knuckled,
when there is no hope in the world.
You just have to sit it out.

I swear, after the wave closes over your head, you will surface again."

*****
start: 247
Now: 139
Height 5’3”

A member of a forum I frequent,
who is also a member here at DietHobby,
recently posted the following excellent suggestion:

"At a very dark time in my life,
I was assigned the task of finding "5 good things"
in each day, no matter how small.
(Originally it was 10, but I felt that was asking more than I could do.)

It was a powerful assignment, because it made me
LOOK for "something good, somewhere."
Many of the things on my lists were miniscule
... but the process made a real difference to me."

Changes happen every day,
Sometimes these remove us from our comfort zone,
but changes challenge us,
and can cause us to live our lives more fully.

Even if we simply change our route to work,
or the path we walk the dog,
it can change our state of mind.

Routine is something many of us need and thrive on,
but consistency doesn't mean "the same".

  Like, you consistently think,
but you don't always think in the same place.
You can love a person or pet,
but it's not always in the same way, shape, or form.
And, you can do the same exercises,
but your body changes and adapts to grow with you,
...if you continue to work at them.
 
Change is the only "constant", and much of it is unavoidable.
Learning to embrace changes leads us to transformation and fulfillment.
Along that line, I've made a few changes related to DietHobby. 
My 30-seconds-or-less inspirational videos are now labeled:
"Words of Wisdom", and my son-the-web-genius convinced me to expand
my DietHobby-YouTube-Channel further into the YouTube World
by starting a weekly "question and answer" series video called:  "Ask Grandma".  

While the subject matter of that YouTube video series will expand to a variety of issues,
my hope is that....eventually,.... adult viewers who are seriously interested
in weight-loss and maintenance of that weight-loss will join us here.

Ordinarily I won't be posting individual "Ask Grandma" videos here in my Blog,
...although you will be able to find them here at DietHobby.com by going to RESOURCES,  videos.
 I am sharing the first one with you here so you can get an idea of what they are like.

 It's natural to evaluate our activities in life.  But when that capacity for self-evaluation turns harsh and we begin to label ourselves with generalizations such as, "I'm stupid," "I'm a failure," I'm fat and ugly," that's judging yourself, and

"When you judge yourself, you break your own heart."

I work to defuse negative judgments and avoid putting myself in a mental box.

To avoid this mind litter, I say to myself:

"That's not me."

The harsh voice itself isn't really me. That voice is just an echo of past insults,
maybe from a parent, a sibling, etc. that I wound up mentally adopting. Just a bunch of mental toxic refuse
that has nothing to do with the true essence of who I am.

What the voice is saying also isn't accurate. We can't sum up one person, especially ourselves, with a single word or label. People are much more complex than a harsh judgment, or even for those reverse generalizations such as,
"I'm great." "I'm the best." "I'm better than..." Those can give needless pressure to live up to them,
disappointment when we fail to do so, or arrogance when we do.

We can get out of the mental box by refusing to label ourselves, and refusing to adopt labels others try to apply to us. We can just do what we need and want to do with our attention in the present moment. Then, see how it goes, evaluate what we did, and move on.  It will lighten your load. 

But if "That's not me," then who are you?
What is the true essence of a person?

I believe that If my mind is clear and positive, I tap into the power of something vast and awe-inspiring, something far more powerful and capable than I can otherwise consider. My capabilities and sense of well being grow.

But if my mind is full of static and commotion, caused by negative self-talk, I’m out of the frequency of that power, which makes me more likely to experience misery, negative emotions  and a view of myself as small and limited.