The End is the Beginning

Good morning everyone! As of last week, the amazing Tinier Tim has decided to take a small break as a guest writer here at Tips of the Scale, and I will be writing for him in the interim. I have been, up until today, been writing a short post every Monday to keep you all out there in weight loss land motivated.

But I am foregoing the Pulitzer Prize winning (I assume. I mean, the trophy has GOT to be in the mail by now, right?) Motivation Monday posts to write these.

So let’s just dive right into this! I have a confession to make to you all. Despite the fact that I love video games, I rarely finish them. If I have beaten 50% of the games I buy, I would be surprised (never mind getting 100% on games. I don’t think I have EVER done that). But, yet, I still get them. Why do I have an abysmal completion rate? Why do I continue to buy them even when I have some left gathering dust, their stories never complete. I have often pondered this (most recently when I picked up Dragon Age: Origins over the weekend), and I think I finally have the answer. Bear with me here. It’s about to get nerdy.

“It’s about to get nerdy” is my catchphrase.

My name is David Jasmin, and I am afraid of endings. Who can be afraid of endings, I hear you ask? Well, to me, the answer is twofold. On the one hand, I

don’t want an experience to end, so if I never complete that last mission or read the last book, that story is still alive and well, a friend I can go to when the going gets rough. I can just pick it back up and have a new experience with something I am already familiar with. On the other hand, I am afraid of that feeling of emptiness after the game finishes. This to me, is no more pronounced than the ending of Mass Effect 3, not only one of the few games I completed, but one of the very few SERIES I completed. I had poured at least 100 hours into these three games. And I enjoyed every minute of it (pretty much, I’m sure my wife will disagree with my overall demeanor). And then the final mission, and the disappointment that was the ending. The credits rolled, and I shut off the system.

I was devastated. For many reasons. One, the ending. It was bad (especially compared to the first two games). I won’t bore you with the details (or spoilers), but just trust me. It was really bad. Secondly, I didn’t know what to do now. I am not the type who immediately goes and plays the game again, trying out different things. I’m usually just done with it.

This leads me to a big revelation about my personality, one I am sure many of you can understand and maybe even feel. My fear has prevented me from losing weight for most of my life. I was afraid of the ending. I was afraid that I wouldn’t have that old friend (comfort food) to fall back on when I felt like it. I was afraid that I wouldn’t know what to do when I reached my goal. This was uncharted territory! I couldn’t just lose the weight! What happens then?

I think fear is a perfectly natural response when thinking about weight loss. But I am here to reassure you, that the future is going to come to you, no matter what. It’s scary, but it’s OK. We are in this together. We shouldn’t stay the same in a futile attempt to prevent the future from coming. We need to embrace it with the best of ourselves. We can handle anything that life throws at us, we are all tough like that. So don’t be afraid to finish something, don’t be afraid to start something. Be excited to finish something. It means you are starting a new chapter in your life. A exciting world filled with possibilities. Now, if you excuse me, I have some old friends I need to dust off.