My Motivational Bookends

You’d think the benefits of exercise and maintaining a healthy weight would be enough motivation. We hear about the benefits and risks every day. But I think anyone who has successfully lost weight and kept it off has something else that makes it happen.  Experts say a health crisis like diabetes or a heart attack gives a short-term boost, but most people return to old habits. New research says that long term success is usually motivated by something positive, something that people want to be.

My Motivation has two bookends. My father and my son. Yes, I said I would lose weight and get healthy when I retired, but that has been on my “to do” list for a long time. So what was different this time?

I was always Daddy’s girl. My father was a great man. He was kind, generous, smart, hard-working. He could fix or build anything.  He is still alive, but the ravages of the double punch of diabetes and high blood pressure have stolen much of what he was. He had a serious of stokes, large and small, starting in his mid-70s.  At first I was motivated by not wanting my later years to be like his, but then I realized what I wanted was the early years of his retirement to last longer in my life. He and my mother enjoyed traveling and camping, walking in parks, visiting and playing with grandchildren.  Being able to do and enjoy things that were deferred while busy with work and raising children.

My son was in love, thinking about marriage and newly fit after his girlfriend introduced him to running. He told me one day that he wanted me to lose weight and exercise so that his future children would have a grandmother.

Those are my motivational bookends, my father and my son. I wanted the joys of being a healthy, fit, active grandmother and a healthy, fit, active wife and woman.  I keep that image in my mind. I can’t control everything about my future health, but I can (try to) control what I eat and whether or not I exercise. So that’s what I’m working hard to do.

(Day 22 and still counting)