:-/

Part of my goal for this blog is to keep track of the things I change in my life that make me a healthier person.  I know I haven't been writing about that at all, but honestly that's only because I've been putting it off.  The truth is, I KNOW what the next change will be, but when change is like this, I don't like it.

For those of you who may not know what I mean by "next change", I'll explain a little.  I need to lose weight (A LOT of weight), and the dieting thing doesn't work for me.  I've tried it numerous times.  Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of support in this, so I'm doing things a little differently.  I know that in an ideal world we would all be able to change every bad habit we have in an instant and be perfectly alright with that, but it sure doesn't happen that way.  At least not for me.  You're SUPPOSED to be able to look at your eating habits and exchange every naughty thing you eat with something healthier, and control your portions and yada yada.  It all sounds very good, and makes sense.  What doesn't work for me, though, is that you're supposed to change everything all at once, and that's too much change in a short amount of time.  I can't get used to it.   I've always taken it to heart when someone says, "Don't call it a diet, call it a lifestyle change."  The problem is, they then expect you to dive right into a diet and eat completely differently than you did before.  How does that work?!  I'm fully capable of starting a diet, and even doing well for a little while.  It never lasts, though, and somewhere along the line I fall face-first right off the bandwagon.  I've thought about it so many times and tried to look at it from different angles, and really every weight loss plan is the same.  That's when I decided to do it my own way, and everyone else be damned.

I decided to pace myself with the changes instead of trying to do it all at once.  Habits don't form overnight, and when you're trying to change too many at a time, it's nearly impossible.  Eventually I plan to pick up the pace a little bit, but for now I'm focusing on one MAJOR habit I have at a time.  The first change I made was soda.  I gave it up on January 1st and now it's no longer a habit of mine.  That brings me back to the second habit in line.  This one is scary for me.

My name is Leslie, and I'm a choc-o-holic.

There, I said it.

Chocolate.  It is my vice.  It is my drug of choice.  It is SO HARD to let go of, but I have to do something about it.  I know I don't have to give it up completely (talk about recipe for failure), but I have to learn moderation.  It's no secret that I need to lose weight.  Moderating my chocolate intake will be a HUGE step in that.  I know giving up soda is a good first step, and I've been doing GREAT with it.  But if I'm eating way more chocolate than I should be, it's not doing me much good in the long run.

So, my next goal is to completely give up milk chocolate (white chocolate isn't that tasty to begin with, so not a big deal to stay away from for me) and only have a small portion of dark chocolate no more than twice a week.

This is going to be a tough one, but I can do it.  I KNOW I can.  *whimper*