Thursday's Thoughts

Today I reflect on my week.

I want to eat so much.  So much junk.  I crave chocolate, brownies, cookies, ice cream, all that is sweet and satisfying.

I get caught in the battle and don't know how to keep moving forward.  How to be hungry?  How to deprive?  How to make good choices?  How to crave healthy choices?  Ultimately how to allow God to fill me more?

I have worked out hard this week.  A feeling of accomplishment around me in that area, but then I look down, when seated, and see the huge roll hanging over my pants.  Is it worth all this work?  To not see the pounds dropping?  Friends around me, in the same struggle, dropping sizes, pounds, inches..and me, well there just doesn't seem to be the same results.

What needs to change?  Will this weight EVER come off?  Will I ever be at my goal weight of 155?  Is that even possible for someone like me?

It's so hard today.  To not get caught up in discouragement.  After all, I did a kick butt workout this morning with Bob and Jillian on DVD and should be feeling great!  I was sweating hard.  It was dripping off my body.  I ate a great healthy breakfast and lunch.  Why still plagued with discouragement?  I don't always understand it.  I don't get it.  I really don't.  I need to.

What I need to understand is that this process needs to be more about who I am in Christ rather than who I am in clothes, or no clothes and a certain size.  But, it's so consuming.  Thinking that way.  Trying to learn to focus this journey about Christ -well it isn't always very easy. 

I do believe one day I will be at my goal weight.  But, it will be when I stop trying to please myself and stop trying to get approval from those around me.  You know, all the "wow, you look so great! What have you been doing?" comments.  Yea, I seem to value those a little more than I value the way my father looks at me.  I know, pretty shallow.  But for me, I do believe that one day, when I get my focus right, my pride gone, and trust...trust in the power of the cross, then it will click and it will happen.

Such is the journey.  A journey means: process of development: a gradual passing from one state to another regarded as more advanced, e.g. from innocence to mature awareness.  I need to get to that mature awareness.  It is coming.

I am excited to start my book study, MADE TO CRAVE.  I am excited to get rooted in the word, to be challenged with the way I think.  To begin to look at this journey through the eyes of Jesus and what He  thinks rather than my own opinions, desires, struggles, and joys.  I want to glorify Him! I know she will have a lot of tools in her book to help me and to set my focus on the right things.

But, as of today, I have to admit discouragement is following me.  I need to recognize and learn to be thankful for the so many blessings I have in my life.  Lord, Help me to focus on the thousand tiny little blessings in my life and let my discouragement be replaced with joy!  For I do have so much to be grateful for and this journey is not complete.  I am in process, I am working hard, and I am not giving up!

Feeling Guilty

Yes.  It feels horrible, but I do feel guilty about the food choices of yesterday and the day before.  No self control and really if I am brutally honest, not even a desire to make the right choices.  Just a "who cares" attitude.  It's so wrong.  And the scale will prove it.  I don't even want to write what I weighed this morning, but I guess I should just to face it.  189.  I don't get it really.  It is not like I have been eating bad all week. I have even been working out, but for some reason that stupid scale keeps going up.

My confession is that yesterday, despite the voices in my head and heart telling me, rather shouting to me, NO...I wanted chocolate chip cookies.  I drove to the store, bought some veggies that I would need the rest of the week, wandered over to the bakery and yes, grabbed two large chocolate chip cookies and downed them on the way home.  Yes, I loved the taste, but the feeling afterward-so not worth it.  Really sucks.  The really bad thing is that the whole time I knew it was wrong.  I knew that the Lord didn't want me to do it, but in that moment I really didn't care.  That was my attitude.  Such sinfulness in my heart that I would willingly turn away from God in the moment of temptation. 

I can say it was a bit of a wake up call.  A reality check that I still have not arrived and that I am still so very tempted to indulge in the stuff that I crave more at times than I crave God.    Not a good place to be.  Feeling discouraged, a bit depressed, but when I get done writing this, I will be hitting the treadmill and starting over.  Today is a new day.  My eating choices need to change, the amount I consume needs to change, but ultimately my heart and the voices in my head need to change.  I need to be consumed with truth, with the word of God, with his thoughts towards me. 

Slowly, very slowly I am getting it.  I have far to go.  But it is happening. 

I have been at the computer for a bit this morning catching up on all of my favorite blogs.  I want to make mine look nice and be more.  I waste too much time though.  I still need to exercise, go to the store, get my mom a valentine, and yet here I am at the computer. 

I had an ok week.  To be honest it was tiring.  My motivation for exercising has lessened even though I am still running. I think I go in phases.  I know that once I get out there and do something I will feel better, but just doing it takes way more effort that it used to ( two weeks ago) haha!  It's good to write because then I can see for myself how up and down I am. I can see patterns that plague me.  Yea, I must be pmsing...I feelthis way about once a month.  I need to remind myself of that today.  I may not feel like doing what I know I need to do, I just need to do it without thinking about it.  Does that make sense? OK, glad.

Eating wasn't so great.  My man and I went out on Saturday night, and  I overstuffed myself with food that night.  Then the next morning we had some company over and had a huge breakfast.  I started out making good choices then my mid afternoon I just gave in.  I really need to grow in this area.  I want to be a woman who is disciplined.  That values her life and what goes into her body.  Not just what I think tastes good and satisfying.  Usually, it just leaves me feeling miserable. 

Well, it's a new week.  I weighed in this morning at 187.2.  I am going to try really hard this week to see that number go down to at least 185.  I don't want to set myself up for failure, but man, I really would like to be in the low 180's for once.  I get stuck and have been stuck for weeks now.  That means something in my eating needs to changed.  I HATE change.  I want to eat what I want when I want and I don't want to feel hungry at all.  However, the reality is, that if I don't I will only continue to see results that leave me feeling like a failure.  It takes work.  HARD WORK!  I don't like it.  But, I need it. 

Lord, I pray that you would help me today to make good choices for me.  That you would pour out your grace upon my life and show me your mercy.  Give me the tools I need to make choices that glorify you.  I want to live my life for you, to love you more than I love the comforts of food.  It is not an easy one to break, running to food for all sorts of things.  My idol.  I pray you'd help it to come crushing down, that you would convict me when I choose something else over you and that in the process you'd draw my heart closer and closer to yours. amen.

Saturday Confession

I stood at a small little shop yesterday as my kids got to pick out a little treat. 

I paced up and down the candy bar isle...grabbing this one, and that on and reading the nutrition on the back. 

I love peanut butter and chocolate together and there is a new peanut butter snickers that I have been dying to try.  I grabbed it, certain that I was going to get it, after all I hadn't had a candy bar in a long time.  Then I read the nutrition, 250 cals for two little scares of delight.  Worth it or not? 

I prayed, Lord please take this craving away. 

I set it down and then looked at the York patties and a few others.  I wish I could say I was strong enough that I didn't buy anything.  But, I did make a better choice.  I bought a dark chocolate bar and ate only two scares from it.  After all, dark chocolate does have antioxidants and I knew that two small squares would satisfy the craving I had for chocolate, and it did!  However, I am still having to learn that when I crave something like that, why I am craving it and do I NEED it.  I don't think I always do and part of my sinfulness is running again and again to my cravings for yummy tasting stuff rather than to my God.

Sometimes this battle with weight and the scale seems unending and it probably always be.  It was a mentally discouraging week for me.  My mind wasn't strong and I was consumed with the fact that last Monday the scale went back up to 188.  I just couldn't shake it.  I've been trying so hard and to think that MORE effort is going to be what it takes to keep dropping numbers seems a daunting task.  I am trying hard to remind myself that this journey is long, that the number isn't what it is about.  That for me, it is about getting healthy so I can life a full long life and most importantly for me, that I can learn to glorify God with the choices I make about food.

Frustrated

Yea, that's me.  FRUSTRATED.  No weight loss this week on the scale and I honestly have no idea why.  It actually went up.  Pretty bummed about it, but have to remember that it isn't in the number right? It's a journey to getting healthy and as long as I am learning to make good choices that is what is important.  Easier said than done...

My week

It's been a good week other than the fact that I have been sick. 

I have got to learn how to manage life when things get more complicated or my schedule doesn't work as planned.  I did great last week, eating, working out, seemed to flow so smoothly.

Then this week hit, two days with sick kids home= me not working out. THEN, I get sick=not working out.  My rhythm has been interrupted and it gets frustrating and discouraging how to navigate.  I haven't given up though. I am still pushin through and hopefully health will be my friend again next week.  Because I do not like it when my plans don't work out accordingly. 

In the past, I would have thrown the towel in and given up completely.  I would have allowed myself to indulge in the foods I love and crave because "it was out of my control" however, that is not truth.  Truth is that I DO have control over what gets put into this chicks mouth.  I may not have control over sickness, health, work out schedules all the time, but the one thing I do have control over is what I allow to enter this body.  And I am proudly telling you that I did good for the most part.  I did eat like 6 small chocolates one day while preparing the kids Valentine for their teachers.  BUT, I STOPPED at 6!  Before, I would have just kept on going.  But, I did think about those chocolates all day long...and had to remind myself to think on Jesus.  He is truly what my soul craves more of.  I am learning this. 

I told you I was reading a new book.  Made to Crave.  I just started it and she says something in it that really sums things up for me..
        
       "Honestly, I am made for more than a vicious cycle of eating, gaining, stressing-eating, gaining stressing...I am made to rise up, do battle with my issues and, using the Lord's strength in me, defeat them-spiritually, physically, and mentally-to the glory of God."

I love that!  That is so true.  And slowly, I am learning it. 

After looking back at all my weights I am glad to say that it's been a slow and steady journey down.  This last year I actually got back up to 199 and that's when I began to panic.  I had honestly worked so hard to get under the 200lb. mark and the fact that it was staring so closely at me was scary.  That for me is really when my heart was having to be dealt with and God began to grab hold of me.  I didn't want to keep dieting.  I wanted to grow closer to Him and not go to food to fill every emotion that I was feeling.  I wanted Him to fill it.  It's still a daily struggle, but something that I am so thankful for because in realizing this truth, I really feel that I am on the way to truly being an over comer.

Updating

It is now February of 2011.  It has been awhile since posting, but I am now trying hard to keep up on it.

I have been meeting with 3 other women on a consistent basis.  We all struggle with food, overeating, and the addiction that it is.  We just finished a great book Love to Eat, Hate to Eat: Breaking the Bondage of Destructive Eating Habits, By Elyse Fitzpatrick.  http://www.shop.elysefitzpatrick.com/Love-to-Eat-Hate-to-Eat-LEHE-BK.htm .It is a great book and really took me to a new place when I look at this journey to lose weigth.  It isn't so much about losing weight, although that is the natural benefit.  It's that I always put food before God and that becomes my idol.  When I am stressed, happy, sad, anxious, bored, tired, etc. the first thing I want to do is eat, not run to the King of Kings and be filled with Him. This book addresses this issue and it is so good.  Very hard at times, but also very good for someone like me, who depends on the comfort that food brings.  It was really never meant to do that for me.  Food is for fuel, nutrition.  It's meant to keep me going, to keep me living.  It's supposed to be enjoyed, but not over indulged.  We are next moving onto a new book and study.  Made to Crave, By Lysa Terkeurst (madetocrave.org).  Check it out.  It's good stuff!

Anyways, I have come to realize more and more that this journey to weight loss isn't about numbers and pounds shed.  It's about becoming intimately close to Jesus and learning to run to Him when I feel the need to over stuff.  It's a journey of making the right choices.  Taking on life and going to the cross when it gets difficult and not just about bending the elbow to stuff food in my mouth.  I know that sounds kind of funny, but for a girl like me.  It's my addiction.  This thing called Food.  You can't live without it which makes it all the more challenging to overcome.  But in the process of meeting with these ladies and getting into the Word more, I am slowly learning.  I am losing the pounds, eating way more fruits and veggies than I have in the past and learning to eat correctly. It isn't mastered.  I make many bad choices, but it's a work in progress. 

I am down to 186.4 as of Monday.  It's taken me a while to get there.  I feel great though and just look forward to shedding even more.