I have struggled with my weight for about half my life. Okay, maybe "struggle" is the wrong word because sometimes I have just given up. I long for the good old days when I could pretty much eat anything and stay relatively thin. I graduated high school weighing about 120 pounds with a 28" waist. Those days are gone, difficult though it is to admit.

I am fortunate in that, despite my weight, I stay relatively healthy. My blood pressure, especially when I am away from the office for a few days, goes down to about 120/60. My cholestrol could be better but is not horrible either. So far, no diabetes though diabetes does worry me since there is a lot of it on both sides of my family. I have had some knee problems but I really feel those are more the fault of fibromyalgia than my weight. I struggle with fatique but there again that goes along with the fibro and Chronic Fatigue. Though I get sick of it in other ways, I am still "blessed" (if that is the right term -- okay, it definitely is not the right term) to be able to consistently work 70 - 80 hours each week.

But, try hard as I can to hide behind these things, there is no escaping the fact that I have a weight problem.

So far, this post has gone a very different direction from how I intended ... let's try to get back on track.

I really am not an over-eater though I do not always eat the best things. Sometimes I have fallen into a horrible habit of "justifying" the bad things I eat by thinking to myself "Sure, I had that ice cream cone but at least I didn't have those potato chips, too." I know how bad it is to think that way but sometimes that is what I do. I justify my poor eating habits on the basis that they could be worse.

The really bad thing about my doing this is that it is a pet peeve of mine. I see so many people, either in the workplace or their personal lives, justifying their poor behavior on the fact that they are not as bad as someone else. And that just drives me nuts.

Since when is it okay to not strive for all we can be -- all God intended us to be --just because someone else doesn't? This sort of self-justification really makes me crazy and I see it so often.

You may ask why I work 70 - 80 hour weeks. It may seem crazy to you. Yet I know that those kind of hours are necessary if I am going to come anywhere close to completing the work ahead of me. So, I become self-motivated to rise to the occasion and get the work done. If I don't want to do the work, then I need to change my situation. That is easier said than done but the point is that once I have accepted a task, I must rise to the occasion, not justify my poor performance on the basis of another's poorer performance.

When we justify our behavior by comparing ourselves to others, we fall into a pit of mediocrity ... we perpetuate a downhill spiral of mankind and behavior. Again, this applies to the workplace but also to our personal lives and behavior.

I know that I can justify my shortcomings just as quickly as anyone but we all really need to guard against it. They need to teach kids this stuff in school. It bothers me a great deal that, as a society, I see us declining in this area. There seems to be less and less respect for personal accountability and responsibility.

And that is not a good thing.