With only one hundred and twenty days left, the bulk of the year is already behind me. I knew when I began this journey that the goal couldn't be JUST a change on the scale. It had to be a lifestyle change entirely. Like clay to the kiln there has to be a painful refining process. I had to stop measuring success with a worldly viewpoint. In Hawaii I got celebrate some huge victories, ones that the old Joy wouldn't have acknowledged. The old Joy was in a chronic quest for perfection, and anything short of it was unworthy of appreciation. I was living in a perpetual state of 'when I am skinny'. I was missing my life, striving for the unachievable for all the wrong reasons. And when you can't accept yourself as you are, then you are discontent. And if you can't love yourself as you are, you can't accept love from others. My mom lived in this hell her entire life, and she WAS skinny. I had hopes of our Hawaiian vacation to be in February, it would buy m