Why: My Golden Center for Change

Lifestyle changes can be challenging work as we go through the ups and downs of life. Knowing our reasons for making long-term change is important, especially during challenging times. Our reason for change is often known as our why.

I love Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, which places the why in the center of action, change, and doing. I have found this way of thinking to be helpful in many areas of my life. I continually think through making and maintaining my lifestyle changes through my why.

Once we know our why, we can figure out the details of the how and the what. When my focus slips, I go back to my why. And, my focus does slip from time to time. Lifestyle changes around health are hard to sustain in a world where unhealthy options surround us.

I particularly like the image of a golden circle as part of centering my reasons for change. Living a healthy life in a world full of unhealthy foods and pressures is challenging. Regretfully, I have not always acted like my health and wellness were golden, valuable, and important. 

Changing myself has meant putting my health and wellness as my most valuable priority. Long-term success means that I pick myself up after failures and string together more successes than failures over time.

Fighting My Shadows: My Health Is Valuable

I like thinking of my reasons for change as something golden, something valuable, something important and something worth the fight.

I haven't always acted like I value my health and wellness — although I have always wanted to live at a healthy weight. Wanting to live at a healthy weight does not lead to success alone; success requires acting decision-by-decision, day-by-day, week-by-week.

The details of life sometimes make it all too easy to put off my health and wellness. For decades, I thought, “I’ll start tomorrow.” My weight was the most visible sign of my procrastinated choices, my lack of understanding about myself, and my not knowing how to succeed.

To change things, I spent deliberate time thinking about myself and how to change during November and December. I knew that holiday season was too challenging of a time to start with the significant changes that I needed to make.

I decided to capitalize on the collective energy of the new year, even though I did not think of my actions and changes as part of a new year’s resolution.

Transforming My Shadows: Lighting My Road to Change

Instead, I made transform the word of my year since it was an all-encompassing word for the many changes I had to make in all areas of my life. Transform was the scope of the work I needed to make, and this word expressed the magnitude, actions, and ongoing work far better than “ new year’s resolution” did.

As I prepared to overhaul my life, I considered as much as I could about what transform was going to mean for my food, mind, body, and life. Understanding myself from the inside out was the focus of that time, including my reasons for change. I knew success meant facing my shadows with more resolve, commitment, and self-understandings than I had ever done.

I had spent a lifetime failing at centering my health, wellness, and weight loss. Overturning my large-scale failures was going to be a challenge. Even though I wanted to lose about half my weight and to gain greater health, I spent a significant amount of time thinking about my reasons for change — to make sure this time was different, to work through why I had failed in the past, and to put together a realistic plan for myself.

I needed time to be realistic around my shadows, to look at myself honestly, and to place my why in the golden center of my life. I needed time to name, face, and plan for my successes and failures, so I could center my health, wellness, and weight loss. This reflective time was a period of being realistic about who I was and committing to changes that had to take root deep inside of me.

Facing the Shadows of Making Tough Choices and Fear

I had to make hard changes because I could not have it all — unhealthy foods and a healthy lifestyle. When I was honest about my shadows, I knew that moderation did not work for me. Thinking about food addiction helped me; so too did naming myself as a food addict.

I thought that understanding food addiction was the end of what I needed to understand about hunger in myself. It turns out food addiction was important, but it was more of a beginning than an end. There are many angles to this fight for health in modern society, and I continue to understand myself in new and different ways around the problem of what it means to Eat When Hungry and Transform Shadows.

Beyond the food, there were mindset changes that I had to make. I had been postponing changes for years, even decades, because I didn’t know quite how to accomplish what I wanted. I was afraid of the changes, that I would not be enough, that I would fail again.

I was also afraid of all the different ways that the changes would impact my life, including my relationships, my routines, my sense of self. I wasn’t sure I could handle more large-scale failures. I wasn’t sure I could center healthy foods and healthy living.

But, I wanted health as I looked to the time I have left in my life. Naming my shadows meant that I was not living a healthy life or eating a healthy diet. I needed more vegetables, fruits, and unprocessed foods. I had always wanted to live a plant-based life over time, and I centered that as well — although I seriously considered if I would be more successful over time if I kept a small amount of unprocessed meat.

Understanding My Shadows: Circles of Change

I have now lost half my weight as part of my own health and wellness journey, and I am now fully plant-based. I often have to revisit my own "Golden Circle" and reasons for change. I have had more successes than failures, and I do not do my health journey perfectly. But, I have learned how to succeed, how to fail, and how to braid successes and failures together.

Making and maintaining lifestyle changes are ongoing processes. Understanding the continuous improvement cycle in myself has helped me succeed over time. I handle myself more realistically, so I do not shut down when I have a failure. I used to end a health and wellness journey when I failed, stopping instead of continuing on — moving instead to “I’ll start tomorrow,” which meant giving up and giving in to the moment. Throwing in the towel on myself was something I did for decades.

Now, I recognize that failure is part of the journey, and I see my health, wellness, and weight loss journey as ongoing and all linked together in the same braid of myself — successes and failures, ups and downs, starts and restarts. Learning, growing, changing to live in my light and keep my shadows at bay.

“I’ll start tomorrow” became “I’ll start where I am now” and with that mindset shift, I began the journey to a better version of myself with my why in my golden center. My health was golden, valuable, and important. My health is absolutely worth my time to name, face, understand, fight, reframe, and transcend my shadows.

Cheers to you — for who you are, wherever you are on your journey!

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My Transform Shadows Framework

This is the framework that I use to explain my ongoing mental processes to build successes and handle failures in my health journey and my broader life.

Naming my shadows honestly lives at the foundation of making any change. I have to start from a position of honesty in order to change myself. Being honest about binge eating was particularly challenging for me. Once I accepted that as my reality, I could face it.

Facing my shadows moves me from speaking my truths honestly to acting on these truths. For me, there is a distinct difference between naming and acting — largely because I lived for so long knowing what I should do and not doing anything.

Understanding my shadows allows me to act for success. Misinformation about health, wellness, and weight loss permeate society. A big part of my journey includes the process of uprooting misinformation. Understandings that I can feel from inside of me help the most.

Fighting my shadows centers the ongoing battles of working against my instincts and the constant pressures for unhealthy living from the world around me. Some days, the fight runs deep in what feels like a losing battle. Giving up was my action of choice for way too long. The verb nerd in me now centers action verbs – actions that have positive results.

Reframing my shadows redefines how I understand and perceive ideas, actions, and myself. I have learned to love foods I used to hate. I understand hunger and eating when hungry differently in myself. Learning to see myself, foods, and concepts in new ways has empowered me.

Transcending my shadows describes the state of living where all the changes seem effortless, normal, and natural. In this phase, I wonder how I could ever struggle. Perhaps most importantly, I feel a sensuality of wellness that permeates all aspects of my life. And, I always want to come back when I leave this wonderful place.