Said Daily These Two Words Will Transform Your Losing After Fifty Trek

Our daily motto: full immersion. Full immersion. Full immersion. Say it often and in time your brain will latch on and begin to make better smart eating choices.

Hi Thrivers,

Fun week babysitting an African grey parrot. So sweet, so smart.

On with the show! ♥

Pearl One

When my boys were young, we moved often enough that homeschooling them seemed like the best plan. Also, as a travel writer destinations and hotels don’t want to deal with media during their busy seasons, but in bleak February they’re like, “come on down!” So, the boys being homeschooled made it easier to travel.

And one son’s personality did not lend itself to the school system. (To put it mildly.)

So, I put one toe on the home school yellow brick road and never looked back. It wasn’t long before I realized that to do a spectacular job, I had to go all-in.

It was time: go full immersion or go home.

Homeschooling my boys became my thing, I even put reading my own books on-hold for many years because reading kid-lit was an enormous slice of our homeschooling life. If we weren’t doing an actual lesson, we were with Laura and Pa watching a railroad being built.

Point is: weight loss and preservation after age fifty also requires full immersion.

I know. I can hear you saying, “look, lady. My schedule is packed. I might be retired but I’m regularly knee-deep in a, b, and c. Full immersion might be a lovely concept for others, but it won’t fit my lifestyle. What else have ya got?”

That’s the thing.

I don’t have anything else. Attempting to live the Smart Eating Lifestyle without calling it a part-time job and living like it’s your part-time job is the only way I know of to preserve a forever-loss.

If you want the Ozempek quick-fix then, of course, you can lose twenty pounds for the upcoming reunion.

But if you’ve had it with losing and regaining the same pounds over and over again, the time is now to fully immerse into the Smart Eating Lifestyle. (Why is “the time now”? Because we’re not twelve, that’s why.)

As I’ve said, follow my bread crumbs. I want to forge a new chapter for women over fifty; one where we create the best, healthiest second half of life as we possibly can. And that starts with learning how to get to your preferred weight and preserve the loss for a lifetime.

I’ve mentioned before that when I caught a picture of myself at my cousin’s wedding, I honestly didn’t know at first who the heavy woman in the red dress was until I saw my very round face peering back at me.

We’ve got this. I’ll share every micro-step I ever took over the last two decades. Just follow my lead and we can make this happen. But first, commit to the full immersion. ♥

Pearl Two

Put succinctly, being bored when we’re living the Smart Eating Lifestyle is playing with fire. Insert fun into the harder windows of your day. Don’t take boredom lightly. Along with stress and grief, boredom is one of the top three smart eating day-destroyers. ♥

Pearl Three

Topic for July: how to keep steering yourself back onto the Smart Eating Path.

Acknowledging that you will slip into negative eating is the first step in dropping the traditional drama around food (“what’s wrong with me?” “I’ll never be a size 12” and so on). So, you ate the cheesecake. I mean, who hasn’t?

Here’s the new modern-day drama you’re fully encouraged to embrace: grab the ketchup (or salt, whichever’s handy) and squirt the blank out of the offending food that you might inhale. Or take a slice and then squirt it. You have to move fast for this trick to work.

Squirt like your life depends on it. No little blob-squirts, douse the sucker!

The ketchup or salt is doing double-duty for you. 1) Squirting the cheesecake with ketchup means that that particular offensive food is done. Now you can easily throw it away. But 2) the ketchupping action shouts to your brain that life is changing. No longer will we – you and your brain – be at the whim of food. Your brain is always watching, always soaking in what you’re up to. If your brain see’s you decimating negative food often enough it will think, “we don’t like porn-food. Good to know.”

After you’ve ketchupped the last of the cheesecake, wait an hour or two, keep yourself busy, and get back to your happy and healthy food plan (for me that usually means I make my blueberry-oatmeal bowl). And remember, even if you only ketchup the very last bite of cheesecake, you can still call it a win. ♥

Pearl Four

Books love us and want us to be happy.

Summer is for light and frothy books. Who wants to sit at the pool reading the Grapes of Wrath (awesome page-turner, by the way). In honor of summer, I highly recommend Lisa Scottoline’s — rhymes with fettuccine — memoir-funny books.

The books are a LOL-hilarious and a very frank peek behind a successful writer’s curtain. Also, they’re best read in order. 🙂

• Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman
• My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space
• Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter
• Happy and Merry
• Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim
• Have a Nice Guilt Trip
• Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?:True Stories and Confessions
• I’ve Got Sand In All the Wrong Places
• I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere But the Pool
• I See Life Through Rose-Colored Glasses ♥

Pearl Five

Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.” ― Steve Maraboli ♥

And as we’re getting stronger and more resilient in parts of our lives, we need to acknowledge and high-five ourselves when we pull off something wonderful like getting the colonoscopy we’ve long ignored or taking a new route to see clients so you don’t drive by your (once) favorite donut shop. Throw a little internal party for yourself as in, “wow, look at me. I haven’t had a chip or a cracker in a year!” (Large parties allowed too.)

Thank you so much for everyone who follows me on Facebook and Instagram. Very appreciated.

I would love it if you’d share a post with family, friends, even doctors. 🙂

Have the kind of weekend where you stop and appreciate how cool and accomplished you are.

♥, Wendy

P.S. Are you new to the Inspired Eater? Welcome!! This blog won’t make much sense until you first read the Aunt Bea post (and you’ll find Aunt Bea on this page to the right under my short bio). On your cell you’ll see it immediately following the first post. After you enter your email address, the Aunt Bea article will be sent to your email’s inbox. If it’s not there, you might check the spam folder. And always feel free to email me at Wendy@TheInspiredEater.com and I’ll get Aunt Bea right to you!

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