Impressed

I'm more impressed by "real" people accomplishing a goal than by rich people doing it. Oprah's marathon was impressive, because all people who run 26.2 miles impress me. I'm more inspired, motivated and moved by average bodied, average income people who run the marathon for charity and are clearly struggling at mile 8. They didn't have tons of money to spend on a chef, trainer, run coach and people to keep her away from bad food. (Like Courtney Love did for drugs and booze.)

I feel the same thing about weight loss. I'm less impressed by Mariah Carey's weight loss than I am by the stories in magazines about how people lost weight on their own. How the decided it was time to do something and then did it. I just found that Huffington Post has a regular feature called "Weight Loss Success." I read Linda's story and some of the things she said answered questions I had posed earlier.

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To someone who has never been overweight, the idea that 150 extra pounds can "sneak-up" on a person probably seems ridiculous, but that is how it felt to me. I don't ever remember waking up one day and realizing that I was the size of two adult women. It was such a gradual process. If something looked good, I ate it (without a single thought about calories or portion size). My weight problem was the result of tiny, minute-by-minute decisions made over the course of 20 years.

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This really made sense to me. I understood how her window of acceptable weight was bigger than mine. I am glad that she has maintained a healthy weight for a few years now and is helping inspire others to do the same.