Tag: weight loss

Losing Weight, Day One: Truth

Margaret2 Comments
Huntsville Botanical Garden

Psalm 25:5
Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all the day long.  (ESV)

Food choice control doesn’t start after the fact, it starts before.  When the side effects of food we know we shouldn’t have eaten hit, we develop good sense amnesia regarding food for the rest of the day, giving in to the growing cravings to eat anything sugary, salty, and fat-laden, that never quenches the desire.  I call it feeding the consequence.  When I am in the throes of a sugar binge, it’s hard to remember I have a choice, and I will toss all resolve to the wind with barely a thought, much less a fight, and eat like the sugar addict I admit that I am. 

For a successful day, we must first make a commitment.  We have to want to lose weight enough that we resolve to remember our triggers, and not pick up the loaded gun of unhealthy food.  We also know those first few days are going to be the hardest, especially if we are coming off a weeklong (or longer) stretch of undisciplined gorging.  It’s easy to unstrap the feedbag on Monday morning.  It’s hard to keep it off through lunchtime.  Go dig out that diet plan that has temporarily worked for you in the past and start with that, but place more faith in yourself than in the plan.  Only we can decide to abstain from trigger foods (even if they are permissible on our plan) knowing it will throw your cravings into overdrive. 

Remind yourself often that you are in control, not your appetite.  If you want to lose weight, then find the way you can live with for the rest of your life and do that.  This will take time, effort and research, and losing weight is going to be slow.  But five  pounds a month is 60 pounds in a year, rather than being in the same place (or heavier) a year from now. 

 Tomorrow:  Slowing Down

My Own Words Bite Me

Margaret1 Comment

I’m at that place where the scales aren’t moving.  I’m stuck at 73 pounds.  I was stuck at 50 pounds a few months ago, but I knew why…I was pigging out on the weekends and behaving through the week.  Took a month off from restaurants and that took care of the hump.

Nashville Zoo

I did screw up a weekend a few weeks back.  I think most people trying to lose weight can relate to this:  I spend three weeks losing 4 pounds, binged on the weekend, and gained back the 4 pounds in two days!  Took me two weeks to lose those pounds again.  Vicious cycle.

I don’t know why our bodies will do that…hang on to every pound for dear life, and grab two pounds just by smelling the Krispy Kremes. 

My first 50 pounds were easy.  Melted right off without much struggle, and with no exercise.  For the last month, I have been walking.  I am now doing 50,000 – 70000 steps per week.  It’s not always easy, but it’s doable. 

Nashville Zoo

Here’s were my words are slapping me around.  I’ve been losing and gaining weight my entire adult life.  And now I’m 57 years old and feel as if I can advise with some tiny bit of knowledge learned from my years of experience.  So, I say about losing weight:

  • Find a way to eat that you can live with and do that.
  • Don’t engage in extreme exercise if you’ve never done it and don’t like it you won’t stick to it.   Find the way to exercise that you can live with…and do that. 
  • After the initial quick weight loss of a new diet, it’s going to be slow.  Very slow.  Very slow is better than not at all or gaining.

Slow is not an option,
but the rule.

But I find myself at the point where I’d rather eat than get on the scales after a week of walking over 10,000 steps each day, eating according to my chosen plan (Weight Watchers) and seeing a 2-ounce loss.  Two. Ounces.   I know my plan works, and I know that slow is not an option but the rule, and I am frustrated.  I still have 88 pounds to lose.  And I cannot use my upcoming vacation, Thanksgiving, and Christmas as reasons to quit or gain.  And if I do gain, I must not quit.

To show my hypocritical thinking…I’m going on vacation next week.  I do not plan to count points.  Why commit to something I probably won’t do because it will be such a hassle?  The best I can promise myself is to make wiser decisions.  It will be a test, no doubt.  

My Back Yard

A Very Monday Tuesday

Margaret2 Comments
Sea Oats (Fort Walton Beach, Florida)

Today begins a month-long commitment of no restaurant food.  (Lord Jesus, please help!)   I’d also like to commit to a beginner’s walking routine (notice my loop holes “I’d like to” and “beginner’s”).  Obviously, I am not as resolute to walking as I am to staying out of restaurants. 

Why no restaurants?   I’m glad you were wondering because I wanted to talk about it!  Aside from the whole “it’s not all that healthy for me,” there’s the truth:  I tend to reward myself for acting like a normal human with a normal appetite through the week by eating out on the weekend.  No matter how well-intentioned my plans are, I make the choice to overeat every weekend.   Maybe not in the first restaurant, but certainly by the second or third one. 

Oh.  I didn’t mention that I like to eat out a lot?   That is one of the reasons I say, “Lord Jesus, help!”  After all the bad choices in the restaurants, I then do something really senseless, I think, “Well, as long as I’ve already overeaten, I may as well have some…”  And everything that follows that line of thinking truly is always a choice.

Let me back up.   After a tumble in a mountainside creek (and issues getting up) last October, I started Weight Watchers.  By February, I’d lost 50 pounds.  Then unexpectedly, my mom died and I got on a 10 pound roller coaster losing and regaining the same 5-10 pounds…repeatedly.  While my precious mother’s death is the best excuse I’ve ever had to overeat, it is ultimately still just an excuse for my choices.

Let me back up even further.   Over the years, I begged God for freedom not realizing that as a child of God, I always had that freedom.  But I also had a free will.  Then there’s that whole reaping and sowing thing, and it all makes a full circle back to choices.   Yes, indeedy-doody.  Choices.  Reaping and sowing.   If I choose to eat an abundance of sugar-laden food, then I’m going to face some pretty intense cravings that nothing will satisfy.   If I choose the food, I chose the cravings.  If I keep eating, you guessed it…that is still a choice.   Hard as it may be to not give into it, that blood bought choice is undeniably mine. 

Did you know that as long as you believe you are a slave to sin (gluttony, that is) you just cannot walk in the freedom purchased by blood on a gruesome cross so many years ago?  Until you (by you, I mean me) take full responsibility for your (my) choices, we remain on that not so merry merry-go-round.   You know what happens when you go round and round too many times?   You get a little sick, don’t you?   

So, there we have it, it’s those ding dang choices!  I don’t always like responsibility, and making better choices for myself is definitely my responsibility.  I favor the path of least resistance, but I made the choice for the month of June to remove a weekend obstacle and get past this 50 pound marker where I have been stalled since February 7.    

That is all.  Carry on with your own healthy choices!

Monday Musings: The Great Habit Exchange

Margaret2 Comments
Sunset on Fort Walton Beach

I spent a few days in Fort Walton Beach, Florida last week. I’m not usually a beach lover, I tend to be a mountain girl, but who doesn’t like the roar of the ocean, the birds, and the beautiful sunsets and sun rises every now and then?
As I was editing the photos for this blog, what I remembered most about the sunset was all the time I spent snapping pictures, instead of sitting back to enjoy the disappearing sun and the sound of the waves. Like the time I spent trying to get the perfect image, I realized that I’d spent a lot of my life trying to accomplish something for the future, but not enjoying life right now. It’s a little phenomenon I call living in the future.
For me, it is all the time I wasted trying lose weight believing that next year, when I’ve reached my weight loss goal, I’ll do this, or go there, or go see my old friend who I’ve avoided because I didn’t like my weight. True friends wouldn’t care about my size!

Gulls in the sand

Around a year ago, I had a profound experience where God began to answer my years of prayers for freedom. I have learned so much since then. Some of it has been some hard lessons about choices, habits, personal responsibility, and change. Change often involves a bit of crucifying of self, and that, my friends, is difficult and painful.

Sand weeds (I have no idea what they might be called.)

Something I was reminded of in Florida is just how easy it is to slip back into old habits. They are so welcoming and comfortable! The more I learn about freedom, the more aware I become of my personal responsibility and my choices. I went to the beach without a plan in place, and I acted just like a girl without a plan. I didn’t weigh this morning…my scales are broken. Thankfully! If I can’t prove I’ve gained any weight, it must not be true, right? No? :::Oh:::
Once while discussing weight loss with a friend, I argued freedom didn’t include a diet plan. She quoted the scripture, “Without a vision (plan), the people perish.” I countered that our hope wasn’t in a diet, but in Him. We may have both been right.
We do need a plan. The plan needs to include a complete power exchange. Instead of letting bad habits have the control, we take control of our habits. Bad habits don’t change themselves, and they don’t let go of us easily. That’s where God’s beautiful grace comes in.

This view is five floors up, and it is my favorite memory of the trip. I spent some quality time with God here, looking out over the ocean.

I’m not saying you should ditch your diet plan. But if you have repeatedly lost weight and regained it using the same plan, it’s not working for you. If it was, you (and I) would be thin by now. Getting to know your appetite, pinpointing your bad habits, and figuring out which good habits to replace them with takes patience and perseverance. It is a process, but once the power exchange has taken place, it is no longer a struggle. You really are in control, not your appetite, no matter what your appetite is yelling at you. Over the next few months, I’m going to be working on Habit Builders like the ones below. I sure hope you join me. Five for Five. Five good habit for five days….the first one should always include God.

The Emerald Coast water tower in the distance

Five for Five Suggestions:

  • Give a sincere, head bowed, eyes closed blessing over your food, not just a quick “Thank you, Lord,” as you pop the first bite in your mouth. Take a moment of true gratitude. Not everyone has something to eat today.
  • Start off with smaller portions.
  • Slow down!   Chew more.   Put that fork down between bites.
  • Remind yourself often, “I am not a glutton. I am free from the chains of sin because of the cross of Jesus Christ.”
  • No sugar (cookies, cakes, candy)
  • No junk food (chips, colas, snack crackers, etc.)
  • Choose to not be a glutton…which is a LOT easier with no sugar and no junk food.
  • Read scripture every day, even if it is just one Psalm or one chapter in Proverbs. (This should be a life-long commitment, even if you are extremely busy, or on vacation, or whatever.) If you are going to skip something, skip a meal, not Scripture.

If you are interested in reading more about Five for Five, I wrote about it HERE.