Friday Quote Day

Wishes change nothing.

Decisions change everything.

~ Anonymous

Any one of us who has written a weight-loss blog for any length of time could have spit out this week's quote. (I've neglected Friday Quote Day this month, for no real reason other than I've had Other Important Things to say. Heh.)

I started Friday Quote Day as a way to not have to come up with an idea, a theme, to write about at least one day a week. Fridays were for posting an inspirational and pithy line or two and just riffing off it for a few paragraphs. Sometimes I remained inspired by the quote for several days. Sometimes I couldn't remember it an hour after the post was published.

The quotes which have made my refrigerator cut have nothing to do with weight loss or fitness or achieving goals. I've posted thoughts about anger and anti-consumption and service, such as:

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants." ~ Esther De Waal

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?' " ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

These speak more to my everyday life than something someone happened to say about weight-loss success.

On a day-to-day basis, I'm usually (past couple of SICK weeks excepted) planning a meeting for our local Democratic women or thinking about the prison AA meeting or wondering what to fix for dinner or what to knit next or whether I should sell all my yarn or how I can help my children or grandchildren.

My husband and I play a game or two of Super Scrabble almost every day. We talk about politics and health care and spirituality and sobriety and his mother.

He's proud of me for who I am, not for how I look. He's probably be prouder if I looked like Betty Draper, but I never have and never will and he knows that and it doesn't matter. Especially during these past two weeks, he's been very concerned about how I feel and how I'm taking care of this cold and I wonder if he's worried about what would happen if something really bad happened to me.

I know I am.

Just as you can't wish to be thin and make it so, you can't wish to be truly well and over a respiratory bug. But you can't just decide to be thin or well, either. Decision must lead to action. As far as this cold goes, it will have to run its course. I have called the doctor and taken over-the-counter remedies and stocked up on tissues and rested, rested, rested. I coughed my way through a meeting last night and learned that others have been afflicted for four or five weeks.

Weeks!

And as far as attaining a healthy weight goes? That might never happen, for me or for you. But my decision is more about treating myself well by eating healthful, home-cooked meals and keeping my bones, muscles and joints strong and active. Theoretically, following this plan should result in a loss of pounds. But in the end, it's what's inside – inside my skin and inside my head – that counts.