Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. -Albert Enstein

Einstein was a genius right?  So it stands to reason that perhaps when one finds themselves doing the same thing over and over there is a choice to be made...either become insane or do something different.  

I am NOT a mental health expert but I think that I might have been just at the edge of insanity but thanks to my puzzle making and my ever-patient husband my mental health crisis as been averted for now.  

And what is the source of the near insanity you ask?  Weight loss.  It is no secret how much of a struggle my journey has been pretty much this whole year.  But I continued to trudge to Weight Watcher meetings, stepping up to the scale and putting it all out there.  I have clapped for who knows how many 5 pound stars, none of them mine.  I continued to track one day and not the next.  I would walk everyday during the week until it started a 10 day rainy streak. (I am a fair weather exerciser.)  And the result?  Bouncing up and down like the yo-yo Taelin loves to fling around and sometimes smacks into walls.  (I am admitting to feeling like I have smacked into a wall.)

So then....a change needs to happen.  It has been brewing for awhile.  There are a lot of things that aren't working for me anymore so I need to stop doing them.  There was a lot of internal struggle (A LOT), some tears and a few hugs doled out by Joe but I have reached a few decisions.

First of all, I have changed my Weight Watcher subscription.  Instead of the monthly pass which includes the online support, the meetings with the leader and other members and weekly weigh-in, I have switched to an on-line version only.  I am still track my food and my weight and have the support of the online community.

With the money I have saved ($25 a month), I have joined a locally owned gym.  It is nothing fancy but it has equipment and classes and clearly isn't catering to the die hard fitness folks.  I have some friends that have been going there for awhile.  It has a in house daycare, which again isn't anything fancy, but just today I took a 1 hour step class while Taelin played kitchen, puzzles and watched a Mickey Mouse show.  She was happy, I was happy (but sore) and after an hour we went about our day home together.

I ran into my Weight Watcher leader on Black Friday randomly just days after I have changed by subscription.  It was awkward because I felt like I needed to explain myself, especially after the email she had sent me the week before.  (I hadn't been to a meeting in three weeks.)  I imagine that there will be a few more awkward conversations with people as I change the way I am trying to become healthy.  I have to keep telling myself I am not quitting.  I am not going to meetings anymore nor am I relying on a scale in a center to keep me motivated (which quite frankly wasn't working anyway) but I am not quitting.  I am changing what I am doing because what I was doing wasn't working.  I am going to become healthy.

I guess we will see how it works out.  I am not sure how much I am going to update with my journey.  I am sure it will make an appearance but quite frankly I need to take a step back from thinking that external pressures like a weigh-in or a blog post is going to influence my decisions.  I don't like that on this blog, when you look at the label cloud on the left hand side, "weight loss" is one of the most used labels.  Weight loss isn't who I am.  I am a wife and a mother, a sister and a daughter.  I am a teacher, a mentor, a reader, a writer, a learner.  I love to cook and take pictures, go out with my friends and laugh until it hurts. There are things that excite me, scare me, calm me, inspire me.  I am more than weight loss.

Here is to not going insane.