Soli Deo Gloria!

Weigh In: Week 3

// January 30th, 2008 // Comments Off // Exercise, Weight Watchers

Lost 1.2 lbs.…for a total of 8.4 lost in 3 weeks!

I will admit, I felt a twinge of dis­ap­point­ment. Dis­ap­point­ment, NOT dis­cour­age­ment. Noth­ing is going to make me quit. As I said last week, as long as the weight is going down, I’m happy.

I went back to the 2 mile walk, BUT I added the weights to it. Yes, I fixed my DVD. Tooth­paste works won­ders! I knew I could not do 3 miles with weights and I want to use the weights go build up mus­cle as I lose the weight. I’ll get to the 3 mile again soon!

I ordered The Firm’s Trans­FIR­Ma­tion sys­tem on Over​stock​.com at a GREAT price! I want to build up a library of exer­cise videos so that I don’t get bored. And as I said.…build up mus­cle as I lose weight. The Firm is a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult, so we’ll see how that goes.

Any­body heard of Zumba? It’s an exer­cise rou­tine, but more like Latin danc­ing than straight up work­ing out. I want to get that one next…but my wal­let says NO.

My new addic­tion: Air popped pop­corn! The pic­ture above is the air pop­per that I have, thanks to my daddy! Air popped pop­corn is a great snack on the WW pro­gram. Now…ain’t no way I can eat taste­less pop­corn. I found a great com­pany that offers a lot of dif­fer­ent sea­son­ings for pop­corn: No More Naked Pop­corn.

I bought White Ched­dar, Ket­tle Corn, Apple Cin­na­mon, Parme­san & Gar­lic, and Choco­late Marsh­mal­low. They have a spe­cial: Buy 4, get one free. You can get them at Wal-Mart and some gro­cery stores, but the selec­tion is lim­ited. My store had the White Ched­dar, Parm & Gar­lic, and Butter..but none of the oth­ers. All in all, I paid $21 for 5 bot­tles of sea­son­ing that will last me quite a while. Don’t even THINK about order­ing it from Ama­zon: The ship­ping isn’t worth it!

I tried the Ket­tle Corn this afternoon..it was pretty good, a nice touch of sweet. I said I’m addicted to popcorn..so I may just make more before I go to bed. LOL!

Another new item: Diet Choco­late Cherry Dr. Pep­per. YUM! And it goes with my pop­corn just fine!

Weigh In: Week 2

// January 23rd, 2008 // Comments Off // Weight Watchers

I lost 1.8 pounds!

I thought I’d lose more because of the amount of exer­cise I did this week. BUT, I am in no way unhappy. As long as the num­ber keeps going DOWN, I’m a happy camper!

I did get up and do the 3 mile again today, and plan on doing it tomor­row.

Last week, my meet­ing leader, Joanne, asked us to come up with a way to moti­vate us to stay on plan for those days when we want to throw in the towel. What I did was cre­ate a photo album. It holds 4x6 pho­tos, so I can carry it with me every­where. I put a few pic­tures of my son first, since it was his inno­cent request that got me started on this jour­ney. After those, I put the pic­tures that I’ve taken recently that I hate the way I look in (see Before Pics and Gallery). I left lots of room to add pic­tures as I lose. So, every month I’ll add a new pic­ture to it. Although I don’t fore­see a day when I won’t want to do this, just in case, it’s INSTANT moti­va­tion!

Alright..off to have a snack (fat free/sugar free choco­late pud­ding: It’s good, really it is!) and then off to bed…after I fin­ish laugh­ing at Amer­i­can Idol. Oh yes. I’m a huge fan! 

I did it. Yep.

// January 22nd, 2008 // Comments Off // Exercise, Weight Watchers

Had to do the 3 mile.  I made it!  And at 5:40AM to boot!

Forced to walk.

// January 21st, 2008 // Comments Off // Exercise, Site stuff

My inten­tion was to do the Walk Away The Pounds 1-Mile walk for a month, just so I could get used to exer­cis­ing again.  How­ever, my DVD had other ideas.  I put it in today and clicked on the 1 mile.…it would act like it was start­ing, but go right back to the menu.  I had two choices: Do the 2 mile or not exer­cise?  Wait a minute. NOT EXERCISE?  Yeah..so I really had no choice but to do the 2 mile.  I did it, no prob­lem.  Of course, right before the cool down, the DVD stopped. I think it has a scratch on it.  My next choice is the 3 mile.  THREE MILE?

I don’t think I’m ready!

Spent a lot of time yes­ter­day on the site.  Got the gallery up.  I really love Word­press!  The plu­g­ins that are avail­able are awe­some.  Any­way, check the site out, tell me what you think.

Keep on movin!

// January 19th, 2008 // Comments Off // Weight Watchers

I forced myself to get up this morn­ing and begin exer­cis­ing.  I just couldn’t get out of the bed to start before work this week, so I told myself that doing it today (Sat­ur­day) was a MUST.  I dusted off my Walk Away The Pounds DVD and got started. I haven’t done it in almost 4 years, but it came back to me quickly.  I started with the 1-mile walk since it’s been a long time since I’ve exer­cised any­thing.  I actu­ally got through it eas­ier than I thought. I didn’t even break a sweat until the very end!

I think I’ll do this for about a month, then I’ll switch to the 2-mile.  My goal is to get up and do this EVERY morn­ing, week­ends included.   I am SO seri­ous about tak­ing the remain­ing 95 lbs. OFF!

Some­time this week, I’m going to add a gallery with cur­rent pic­tures, which I’ll upgrade as I lose weight.

A new me.

// January 17th, 2008 // Comments Off // Weight Watchers

Last year some­time, my son and I were dis­cussing something..and I don’t recall what. What I do recall is that at the end of that con­ver­sa­tion, my son looked up at me with his big brown eyes (think about the cat from Shrek LOL) and inno­cently said, “Mommy, can you do some exer­cise? I don’t want you to be fat.”

WOW.

I told him sure, we’ll see, some­thing like that. But what he said stuck with me. For the last half of 2007, I’d been very dis­pleased with how I look. I nor­mally like pic­tures of me, but I haven’t liked one in at least 6 months. I don’t like what I see in the mir­ror. It’s not like I sud­denly gained weight. I sup­pose it’s that I FINALLY am see­ing what’s in the mir­ror ver­sus the self-image I have in my mind. It didn’t help that I have Type 2 dia­betes that was not being eas­ily con­trolled. On top of THAT, my doc­tor has me tak­ing Zocor for my cho­les­terol, which he says is “not bad”, but he wants to get it in check now.

I am 36 (soon to be 37) years old. And I felt like an old lady. I have to take a pill and a shot for my dia­betes, both twice a day. Gotta take the Zocor at bed­time. I had no energy, and I hated look­ing in the mir­ror. Some­thing had to be done!

On Jan­u­ary 10, I walked (yes, walked!) right on down to Weight Watch­ers and signed up. I had done it before and lost 30 lbs., so I knew it would work for me. Back then, I did the Flex plan and counted points. This time, I didn’t have the desire to count, so I chose the Core plan. Eat what I want of foods that are Core foods. Works for me. I started the plan on Jan­u­ary 12. I didn’t exer­cise that week…I can only do one change at a time. Core isn’t that hard to do, it just takes some get­ting used to, as it was a com­plete change from the way I had been eat­ing.

Fast for­ward to yes­ter­day, Jan­u­ary 16: I went to my meet­ing a day early because I had a Dr. appt. today. How bout I lost 5.4 pounds!!! That’s in 5 days! With­out exer­cise! I couldn’t believe it! When I went home and told my son how much I lost, you would have thought I’d just bought him a Wii or some­thing. He was so happy and excited! Now he checks up on me: “Mommy, did you take your pill? Your shot? What are you eat­ing?” I don’t mind though.

Today, I went to the Dr. I knew he’d check my blood sugar lev­els. In the past 3 months, it’s been com­ing down, but it still wasn’t down low enough. Still over 200. Last month, he said he’d check again this month and increase the dosage of my shot if nec­es­sary. So..the nurse sticks my fin­ger, and the glu­cose mon­i­tor read: 97!!!!

97? Say who? Say what? That’s NORMAL! I was SO excited! Need­less to say, my shot dosage was not increased. In fact, I now have to mon­i­tor by blood sugar to make sure it’s not too LOW!

I decided that it was time for me to take this weight off. But if I needed any more incen­tive, this week was IT! The look on my son’s face ALONE would keep me going for months. He has no idea how much he pushes me.

5.4 down, 94.6 to go!

What is my goal?

// January 2nd, 2008 // Comments Off // Bible Study, Godly Living

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spir­i­tual bless­ing in the heav­enly places, even as he chose us in him before the foun­da­tion of the world, that we should be holy and blame­less before him.” – Eph­esians 1:3 – 4

“For we are his work­man­ship, cre­ated in Christ Jesus for good works, which God pre­pared before­hand, that we should walk in them. “– Eph­esians 2:10

“For the grace of God has appeared, brin­ing sal­va­tion for all peo­ple, train­ing us to renounce ungod­li­ness and worldly pas­sions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.” – Titus 2:11 – 12

I am using a book by John Macarthur, Draw­ing Near: Daily Read­ings for a Deeper Faith to help me dig deeper into study­ing and apply­ing God’s word. I’ve had it for a few weeks now, but I’ve decided to write about what I’m read­ing to enable me to really think about it. It does me no good to read every­day and not give it any more thought.

Today’s read­ing is titled: The Mea­sure of True Suc­cess. Right at the begin­ning it says:

God is more inter­ested in your faith­ful­ness

than in your accom­plish­ments.

This cul­ture mea­sures suc­cess by our sta­tus, wealth, and pos­ses­sions. How­ever, God is not impressed by any of that. God mea­sures our suc­cess by how faith­ful we are to His will. His will very often directly con­tra­dicts what the world says is suc­cess­ful. He tells us not to give thought to our pos­ses­sions, to be con­tent with what we have, to seek His approval rather than man’s approval. This is not easy to do, but it is what He requires.

If I am to be what God wants me to be, my focus has to be on being a suc­cess in HIS eyes, not in the eyes of peo­ple. I truly have to not care about what any­body else thinks of me, as long as I’m pleas­ing him. Now, I often say I don’t give a rip about what any­body else thinks of me, and for the most part it’s true. But I have to admit: I’m human, and at times, I’d love for oth­ers to approve of me. At those times, I have to ask myself: WHAT IS MY GOAL? Is it to hear the com­pli­ments and acco­lades of those around me, or is it to stand before God when it’s my turn (and we ALL will have a turn) and hear him say, “Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant? (Matthew 25:21). I can hon­estly say it’s the lat­ter. Approval from other peo­ple is nice, but it does not sat­isfy me. Approval from oth­ers will change like the wind. I’d much rather work toward pleas­ing God, who does not change. God, who works out every­thing for my good. God, who knew me before I was in my mother’s womb. God, who I will stand in front of and give an account for every­thing I did in my life. There’s really no com­par­i­son.

So how do I do that? First, I need to be more con­sis­tent in my obe­di­ence of His word. This means, I have to be more con­sis­tent in my STUDY of his word. I have to be more con­sis­tent in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with him. I have to make a con­science effort to pray EVERYDAY, and not just God bless me and mine, but sit­ting still and med­i­tat­ing on His word and ask­ing him to guide me in liv­ing it out. And as the scrip­tures above say, I need to resolve to live holy and blame­less before Him. I need to live my life to do the good works He has pre­pared for me to do. I need to renounce ungod­li­ness and worldly pas­sions, and to live a self-controlled, upright, and godly life. I can­not do these things in my own power. I will have to fully rely on His grace and His Spirit within me to make this pos­si­ble in any way.

Fol­low­ing Christ in this world is not easy…..but it’s what I am com­mit­ted to doing. I’ve given up mak­ing New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions. What I’m talk­ing about here is not about the New Year at all. It’s just about want­ing to be faith­ful to God.

That’s the suc­cess I’m pur­su­ing.