Labor Day, 2009

Visualize this thing that you want. See it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint, and begin to build.

Robert Collier

Good Monday Morning and Happy Labor Day Sister W.W.F.F.,

I want to let you all know that this week I won't be taking in the gym. I need some time off, and with this being Bob's party week, and family coming in and so much to do, thought it best that I give myself a little breathing room. So if the e-mail is not in your box by 4:30 a.m. don't worry, it just means, I'm sleeping in. :)

I love today's quote, due to it fit me to a "T''. I know you all have heard Toni tell us to visualize ourselves at our goal weight. Of course as you all know, my never being a ''normal'' size I could just not fathom how on earth you do that. So I had to come up with a different solution. One friend told me to cut out a picture of someone the size I wanted to be, and paste my face over that person face. Good idea, but in my mind I could not see body size at anything but 327 pounds. As I mentioned yesterday, it was not until earlier this year, when I really got on fire again, that I began to visualize the number I wanted to see written on my card each week. Now don't get me wrong, just because I visualized that number did not mean I got there, sometime it took me at least 3 weeks to see that number I wanted. But that seem to work for me.

Body image is such a hard thing to deal with. I don't think any of us are ever satisfied with ''what we look like." I look at some of you and I actually ask myself, ''why do they think they need to lose more weight?" As you all know it does not matter how great other's think we look, we have our own image in our heads.

I still can't get used to catching the reflection of myself in the curio cabinet that sets in our bedroom. I have actually thought, ''oh my, there is a stranger in the house." It is the strangest feeling for me to see my reflection and not know who it is.

So if your not driving, close your eyes at some point today and visualize that number you want to see. Here again, I took the numbers in small amounts. After I got past the 200 pound mark, I visualized just 1 or 2 pounds at a time. As all of us that have gotten to goal knows, ''those last few pounds take longer cause we have had the longer."

For our Lisa T. (Love's wife). Stay focused on your week 3 of creating a new habit.