Why write about the way to personal growth, healing, and traveling along the weight loss avenue? Various paths have reached the same peak, arrived at identical conclusions, and achieved similar success. Bumping into countless individuals fighting a crusade akin to mine makes me know the process is conclusively not as simple as it seems. The path is paved with great intention, yet road bumps, obstacles, and detours line the journey to paradise, deterring even the strongest, resilient, and well-intended pilgrims.

Mentors, role models, and those who endure, thrive, and live to tell the tale, share in the hope it might resonate with listeners, readers, and those in search of solutions, direction, and inspiration. This journey to impart the paradigm shift and lead others to a paradise that once was lost, away from a vigorous battle full of regression and relentless abandonment, and pave the path as it arrived in my backyard, is a blessing, a mandate, and a calling. Part of my pilgrimage is to give back to those hopeful, but lost on their journey.

Weight loss processes have held permanent residency in my life since age eleven. I, as many, rode along the coattails of each food phase, from low fat to high fat, low carb to high carb, fake diet industry foods to real food, cooked to raw, to now. Arriving at the conclusion that we were duped by false advertising, nutritional food degradation, and corporate food conglomerates leading us astray, is a start to healing. From billion-dollar industries, we wanted solutions, easy fixes, and magic pills to ease our weight-full pain.

Beyond these external forces, utilizing food for needs other than nutrition plagued our long term, sustainable success at weight loss and maintenance. Losing weight, gaining it back, and then acquiring additional pounds repeatedly, is a vicious cycle. Traveling alone, or in packs of peers, with strangers distant and near, we attempted control of eating habits until one day, we lay down, surrendered, and arrived at significant meaning behind the food, arriving at the doorstep of inner healing, a lifestyle change, and potential happiness.

My journey paves a way to view weight loss and its sustainability through reframing the process. “When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.” – Wayne Dyer – Spiritually, Paving the Weigh is about awakening to a new paradigm that delves deeper than the food. Searching for meaning, acknowledging and relinquishing past pain, and climbing from the cocoon built to protect ourselves, to a paradise of healing, comfort, and worthiness, engages in an opportunity to release weight; it lightens our lives with peace, bliss, and a sustainable paradise.