"When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical."--Anonymous

Various family members have been telling me that I have to lose weight. It is frustrating enough when one of them does it, but in recent days they have all been doing it, jointly and severally. This is very frustrating because A) they are all very fat and have no right to tell me to lose weight when their daily diet consists of pizza and Thai and five coffees and no water and they never exercise at all and probably wouldn't even know what a Swiss ball was if they were laying on one, and B) I know I have to lose weight. I know I am chunkier than I should be. And when I know about a problem and I know that I should fix the problem and I am making vague plans to actually correct it, I rather quickly lose my temper when others make a point of making the same diagnosis and suggestions.

The extremely active fitness blogger Skwigg linked to an interesting article today about workout perserverance. I highly encourage you to read the article. I think Skwigg had a nice summary of it: "NFL quarterbacks don't go sit on the sidelines and cry and eat donuts every time they throw an interception. If you think about it, the best athletes in the world screw up all over the place. They fall down, miss serves, drop the ball, run out of bounds and don't always stick the landing. They're world class athletes not because they never make mistakes but because they succeed in spite of them."

In other words, if you make a mistake, don't throw your hands up and eat an entire pizza. Get up and keep moving.

The article made another interesting point: If you tell people you lost 2 pounds last week, they're not all that impressed. But if you tell them that you lost 100 pounds last year, well then they start pounding down your door to find out how you did it! Slow and steady is never that impressive... until it actually wins the race.