How Shortening (or lard) Can Aid in Weight Loss

I'm taking an aside from getting started in exerise to share a story that might help with perspective:

So last night I was talking to my sister on the phone about the snags she has hit lately in her weight loss battle. And in the middle of the conversation she says something that leaves me speechless. Well.... almost.

She says "I have only lost 23 pounds."

Say WHAT?

I replied back, "Betsie, 23 pounds is a lot of weight!"

Her response?

"I have a lot more weight to lose than you did, so it's not as much on me as it is on you."

I asked her what in the heck was she talking about? A pound of fat is a pound of fat, and it doesn't matter who the weight is off of, be it me, her, or an elephant.

Know what she said back to me? (This is so typical Betsie!):

"An elephant loses 23 pounds when it poops."

Sigh.

So, to try and give her a visual of how much she's lost, I asked her to picture 23 pounds of elephant poop. But then it occurred to me that neither one of us really knew what 23 pounds of elephant poop looks like.

So I went to my cabinet and looked at my container of shortening.

Would you like to know how much a container of shortening (I mean the regular-sized ones, not the little apartment-sized containers) weighs? 3 pounds! When I told her she'd lost almost 8 regular-sized containers of shortening she said in amazement "That's a lot of weight!"

Uh, yeah... that's what I'd been saying..... But it even surprised me the volume that 3 pounds of fat takes up.

So next time you get ready to say "I've only lost x-amount of pounds", divide it by three. That's how many containers of shortening you've lost.

And then pat yourself on the back. Because you have something to be proud of! And the more proud of yourself you are, the better you will feel about yourself. And the better you feel about yourself the more you will want to help yourself.

After all, who wants to help someone they don't like?