Is there such a thing as a "healthy obsession"?

I posted a link a while back on what an obesity expert has to say about "the secret" to losing weight.   I posted it on facebook so maybe you missed it.  One of my favorite quotes towards the end is this one:

"It shouldn't take up your whole life," he says. "Imagine if you had another medical condition. You do the treatment and go home, you take the medicines if needed and you avoid things that might aggravate the condition but you don’t necessarily make your whole life revolve around it…in fact just the opposite--you live life to its fullestwithout letting your condition take over your life." Read the whole thing here.

I've made quite some progress on my journey to health.  Over the last 3 years I've lost about 50 pounds (22kg) and kept it off, varying in weight in a 10 pound range or so.  I've done this doing a few things, none of them will be shocking to you.

• Being more active
• Tracking calories
• Weighing in regularly
• Deciding I wanted it
• Figuring out why I wanted it
• Figuring out what beliefs are stopping me

I could write a post on each one of these, but briefly I've been using SparkPeople.com for a few months and it's helpful, I recommend it.  Being more active is easy when you can bike to work every day.  Thank you to living and working in the Netherlands.  You can't stay in denial if you weigh yourself and then plot it on a graph.  This is about having "hard" data, I posted a bit about this last time, and what I mean by hard data is that it's stored outside yourself and can be recalled without the current mood or emotion coloring it.  So I can't lie so easily and say I'm not doing that bad.   The last three things are all mental, deciding, having a reason, and also figuring out some of the reasons that I haven't done it in the past.  

For example one of my reasons that was stopping me is that if I were in shape then I would be attractive and then I would then attract attention sexually from those other than my wife and put myself into temptation.  As soon as you say out loud or write things like that down they become quite silly.  Just naming them takes almost all the power from them.  Of course it's possible I may become more attractive to others, but what I would do with that is strictly up to me.  I have my values, I've my my promises and covenants and I know where I want to go with my life and afterlife.  I'm not perfect, but I've decided, so then all of a sudden something that was lurking in my mind stopping me becomes a silly passing thought, something to be discarded.  I spent some time going to overeaters anonymous, to some extent that was helpful.  I spent time attending my church's addiction recovery program, that also had some good points to it.

All of this is showing though how much energy I've focused on this whole area of my life.  The point I really wanted to get to though is that I've put quite a lot of time and energy on losing weight, or my relationship with food, or becoming more healthy.  So I'm changing my life, the way I live, the way I feel, but at what cost?  I'm becoming obsessed with all of it, letting this thing take a lot of my time focus and energy.  One may say that this is a good thing, and to some extent I agree, the changes are positive, but I can truthfully say I've seen some people do very well winning the battle in their own journey to health, but the result is they replace one obsession with another.  I'm not looking to do that, I'm looking to do away with obsession in my life, everything in moderation and in its season.

I can see that there are some phases to this whole thing, in somewhat logical order, but it's different for everyone:

1. Realize there's a problem (some kind of wake up call)
2. Figure out how big the problem is (tracking)
3. Start changing it and tracking the difference
4. Achieve real change
5. Make the change permanent

I guess the fear I have is that I'll then become obsessed with the whole thing and let it continue to eat of significant portions of my energy.  My underlying belief here, the way I see it now is that "if I don't focus on it, then I'll relapse into bad habits" and that for me, who tends to not do things half-way that focus will be relentless, or that I need to stay in a permanent state of fear in order to stay healthy.  In this case I'm essentially motivating myself with unhappiness (fear).  

My conclusion now is that obsession, at least for me, is driven by fear.  This is just one way I use unhappiness to motivate me to do things.  So in this definition is there such a thing as a healthy obsession? no, no there is not.  

What are my alternatives? The belief that I'm a healthy man, that I do and eat those things that keep my happy and healthy naturally is a good one.  I'll play with that one and report back.