Do you know the enemy?

by de

When it comes to weight loss, there are plenty of enemies. What you eat, your other commitments, lack of time and organisation etc. The last thing though for me would have been to think that my closest friends (and for some it is family) would be my worst enemy… but that is indeed the case.

When you take control of your life for some reason there are people that are in it that seem to drop like flies. I have had strong friendships literally dissolve in front of my eyes. People that I assumed would always be there for me, suddenly, not. It happens and it’s easy to be pragmatic about it *now* but when it is happening it is bloody awful. I think it was the fact that I was so surprised and  shocked that my friend would suddenly not want to talk to me about the decisions that I had made and the positive steps that I was taking in my life. I noticed it creeping in slowly, I’d say something about being healthy, she would make an excuse as to why she wasn’t. Eventually she told me that she was happy the way that she was (really, why are you always talking about it then?) and i knew that I had to just let it go. There were also the snide compliments, like ‘Yes, you’ve lost a lot of weight…. Now you just need toning… A shitload of toning’ that I was getting tired of hearing, I mean, just because I had lost a couple of kilo’s didn’t mean that I didn’t have feelings! Eventually though, you just HAVE to let it go. I remember reading somewhere that you should imagine all the people on your life are traveling on a bus together somewhere. People get on the bus and people get off the bus. Sometimes you have to let them get off so that there is room for other people to get on the bus, if your bus is full of negative people, saboteurs… how are you going to have space for the positive happy types that will boost you up and keep you smiling?

I am still friends (as far as I am aware) with the friend that I talk about here. We didn’t have some massive falling-out, screaming match or anything like that.. I just stopped ringing. I miss her all the time, we were great mates and she has a heart of gold… I can say that now, 6 months ago I was angry and hurt. I would have told you she was jealous of me and that’s why she was behaving the way that she was. I don’t know if she was jealous of me and now, I don’t really care… It’s really none of my business how anyone feels about me and my transformation.

Whether I am ‘better off’ without her I guess we will never know, but I do know that once I let go of the negativity and surrounded myself with positive people good things happened. I felt better about myself, I did more things, I really started to set and work towards goals. I made new friends. I don’t know that they are ‘better’ friends, but they are the people that I need on my bus right now. I need people that enter runs and train hard, not people that are ‘happy’ the way that they are and are not willing to put any effort into working on themselves. So that’s what I have!

I guess it boils down to my theory about life being something that you create. It’s not sitting in the laps of your old friends waiting on you to go on over there and pick it up.. YOU have to make something. If someone in your life is making that difficult you need to asses their position on the bus!! I know that this becomes increasingly difficult if your negative person is a family member or spouse etc. but the lesson is the same. Do you want to be a negative unhappy fat person that feels threatened every time someone around them does something positive? No? Don’t surround yourself with those types of people then! There are a wealth of happy positive ladies (and a gent or two) in the 12WBT QLD Crew (or other areas/localities) just dying to unleash their inner awesome upon you… I guarantee you you will have a bunch of new friends before the week is out. Happy, positive, strong, determined…. LIKEMINDED friends that will have your back.

These are the sorts of people that I want on my bus.