Following the attacks of 9/11 there was an increase in church attendance across all religions in the Unites States.

Following Katrina there was a rise in church attendance in the affected regions.

While attendance increases in the short term – two to three months – studies have shown that the attendance drops, after a time, to pre-disaster levels.

 Major catastophies can cause changes in general behavior, but I think we all have personal Katrinas or 9/11s that cause us to make changes in our individual lives.

Many of my readers know that I’ve been battling my weight for some time.

I’ve written about wanting to run the Azalea Festival 10K race next year. I’ve written about going on a juice fast. And I’ve written about dieting.

Every time I’ve written about those things, I fervently believed that my desires would become reality. But the rocket would fail to lift off.

I would begin, and then my plans would fizzle to nothing, and I’d be left sitting on the launch pad, holding the emotional baggage of failure.

In my latest and greatest design at making myself better, I decided to take on a juice fast.

I knew that if I was going to take drastic measures to lose weight that I would need to be under the care of a medical professional – my own FNP health guru – and so I sought some advice.

First thing I found out is my guru doesn’t care for juice fasts. He made some great arguments as to why they can be dangerous to the body and, while he said that one can get great nutrition from juicing, it needs to be in addition to a diet with some protein.

Well, to be safe, I had blood work done and when the results came back, I was told that I was this close – visualize my thumb and forefinger about an eighth of an inch apart – to being diabetic.

My guru told me that if I didn’t want to become a full-blown diabetic I needed to make some changes in my life.

That was my 9/11, my Katrina. It made me realize that it wasn’t a game anymore, and I needed to do something – something real – about my weight.

Since finding out, I’ve cut out sugar in my diet. I’ve begun eating more whole foods, and I’ve come to be friends with hunger.

I’m welcoming the pains in my belly like I would an old college chum – glad to see them, but not real sure how the visit is going to turn out.

It’s been almost two weeks since I got the news, and I’ve lost 13 pounds. The next step is to increase my exercise and keep it exciting by changing up the activities. I started at 366 pounds; my goal is 260.

I realize that those readers who joined me earlier in the year to diet have been left with virtually no support from me. I apologize. I’ve also come to realize that I’m not a very good motivator. 

I’ll be keeping the public up to date because I’ve found that when the whole town knows about something it can be hard to cheat, but I’m not asking anyone to join the club or lose weight with me. If you find inspiration in what I’m doing, great. My only advice would be to not let your disaster be something worse than finding out you’re almost diabetic.

The great tragedy of life is that it must be lived forward and can only be understood backwards.

– Soren Kierkegaard