Even though the scales did not change one iota from yesterday, I still feel better. I have a plan and the more I visualize the end result, the closer I come to realization. My personal journal is keeping track of my exercise components (1 mile walk yesterday, 2 miles on the eliptical today), food intake, moods, and clothes I'm wearing. Add one pair of black Not Your Daughter's Jeans back to my wardrobe. YEA! So here are our 4/4 guiding lights for today:

SPIRITUAL thought/action:  In Women Food and God, Geneen Roth explains that in the center of our wounded spirits is this false belief: "I've been abandoned and betrayed by who and what really matters and what I've got left is food." This fiercely defended belief is what opens the door to fear and closes the door to our feelings. "In the act of turning away from our feelings, of trying and trying again to lose the same twenty, fifty, eighty pounds, we ignore what could utterly transform us. But when we welcome what we most want to avoid, we evoke that in us that is not a story, not caught in the past, not some old image of ourselves. We evoke divinity itself."  Today I transform myself and world by accepting the unacceptable.

PHYSICAL thought/action: Cutting down on carbohydrates "flips the metabolic switch. You go from burning carbs for energy to burning your stored fat instead." Atkins for Life   "More and more I am getting better at listening to my body and sensing what it needs."  Affirmation from Belleruth Naparstek

MENTAL thought/action: Once we realize that our lives are formed not by external events but by our own thoughts that act like magnets, we can create the life we most desire. Today I fearlessly focus on my goals and heart's desires.

EMOTIONAL thought/action: Once we face and let go of our feelings of abandonment and betrayal (created in the past), we quit chasing our false gods (food, work, clothes...) and then we get in touch with our true essence, patiently waiting to set us free. "Breathe in to soften our feelings. Breathe out to release them." (Belleruth Naparstek)

Breathe in. Breathe out.  Yours on our journey, Lolly