Trouble With The Curve

One of my favorite movie actors is Clint Eastwood.  He is almost 91 years old now but he stayed quite active and productive as an actor and director through his 80’s.  One of his later movies was “Trouble With The Curve” co-starring Amy Adams.  In the movie, Mr. Eastwood portrayed an aging baseball scout whose eyesight started failing him and his previously estranged daughter starts helping him out.  There is one young player being scouted who all of the other scouts predicted would be great but Eastwood’s character was able to detect a major flaw:  The young player could rip the fastball for long home runs but could not hit the curveball.  

Okay, as this is not a movie blog, but rather, a discussion about weight control, where am I going with this?  Here is the analogy:  During a long-term weight control journey, the path will not always be straight, predictable and easy.  There will be many “curveballs” thrown your way:  Unexpected travel, intense projects at work, an ill parent(s) to attend to, an orthopedic injury that prevents exercise, a kitchen remodeling project that takes away use of your kitchen for awhile:   These and many more unexpected events/occurrences in life will make losing weight much more difficult.  Being able to focus on counting protein exchanges, getting exercise time in, shopping for the right foods, planning and all of the other contributing actions/activities required for successful weight control becomes much more challenging when life throws us lots of “curveballs”.

To be successful in the major leagues, players need to learn how to hit the curveball.  To be successful in weight control, we need to learn how to navigate around the challenges that life presents to us and still maintain our focus and commitment to the principles required to bring us the health and happiness we desire.