Show Me the Numbers.

  

When I was young I had the luxury of only caring about one number when trying to lose weight.  The dreaded scale number.  Now that I have crossed over the dark side into the 40s it is like someone plugged me in and scrambled all my numbers.  Those very important numbers Dr. Oz talks about, that I didn't think applied to me before I turned 40.  Speaking of numbers.  And when my numbers came out of the scrambling machine they were not pretty.  Along with my number on the scale, they are all too high....way to high.

Amazing though....I have only been on this cleanse for one week and the numbers are going down...way down.   I started tracking my fasting blood sugar and morning blood pressure six days before the cleanse.  I want to include those numbers to show the big change.

FASTING BLOOD SUGAR NUMBERS

1-25-11     117
1-26-11     120
1-27-11     113
1-28-11     117
1-29-11     110
1-30-11     113
2-1-11       111   Started the cleanse today.
2-2-11       112
2-3-11       102    This number is getting closer to below 100.
2-4-11        84   After only 3 cleanse days....I was jumping around the bathroom!
2-5-11       95
2-6-11       102
2-7-11       83    More excited jumping!
2-8-11       84    My kids think I must have lost my mind with all the jumping!

Just one week and my fasting blood sugars are so much better.  Numbers that make me smile and jump!

MORNING BLOOD PRESSURE

A little blood pressure background.  I had postpartum eclampsia six years ago, and have battled high blood pressure ever since.  I hope getting to a healthy weight will help it.  If the readings this week or any indication, it should.

1-25-11      146/88
1-26-11      124/84
1-27-11      140/84
1-28-11      134/80
1-29-11      106/70
1-30-11      125/76
2-1-11        139/78   Started the cleanse today.
2-2-11        122/78
2-3-11         98/70     After only 2 days a much better morning number!
2-4-11        100/68      Lots of smiling!
2-5-11        95/60      Squeezing the cat while jumping!
2-6-11       100/65      Dancing circles in the bathroom!
2-7-11       106/69      Yeah!
2-8-11       109/64      More yeahs!

Those numbers are encouraging.  Even my later in the day blood pressure readings are getting lower also.  This really gives me hope that at a healthy weight my numbers will be healthy consistently.

DREADED SCALE NUMBERS

2-2-11   -2   This weigh in is the first morning after day 1 of the cleanse.
2-3-11   -1    The total is -3 now.
2-4-11   -1    Total is -4.
2-5-11   -2     Total is -6.
2-6-11   -0     Total is -6.
2-7-11   -1     Total is -7.
2-8-11    -0.5  Total is -7.5.     My scale just records half pounds.

Total weight loss for week one of the cleanse is 7.5 pounds.  I know I lost a lot of water retention.  I was so bloated from sugar, wheat, and dairy.

My cholesterol numbers are too high, and I hope to have them checked again this summer after I lose a good amount of this tire around my middle.  

Now that my weight loss is tied more to these important numbers, I hope this will encourage me to keep going until I reach a healthy number on the dreaded scale.  There are other lower numbers that I hope to achieve like the kind that are on the inside of my jeans, but these numbers this week are inspiring me to keep going...my body deserves it.   It so wants to heal itself if I will just feed it correctly and give it the chance!                                                                    

HUNGRY

HUNGRY.  It is day 7 of  My Clean Program and I am HUNGRY. HUNGRY for life, food, people, the Word, information, peace, and organization.  With an empty stomach my mind seems clear and focused.   Everything I read seems to jump off the page at me.  This morning in my One Year Bible Moses just led the Israelites out of bondage.  Years of slavery.  Not far into their journey what did they say? "The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt. There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out of this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."  Exodus 16:3.  That's ME and my pots of food!  I do not usually get too far into my healthy eating when I start whining, complaining, and desiring my bondage to food over my freedom from it.   I want to smile when I think did those people really think the God of Abraham that did all those mighty plagues wanted to free them to starve them in the wilderness?  Then I realize I do not trust His plan any more than they did when I want to go back to foodgypt instead of discovering the better road He has before me.

A little further on in my reading and there was Moses (I really like that man), sitting on a rock with his arms lifted high by Aaron and Hur.  The Israelites were in battle, and victory was theirs as long as the arms of Moses were UP.  God gave him support for this battle through Aaron and Hur.  Oh thank you God for support!!!  I know I will not be able to do this weight loss thing for good without you friends and family!

The big question for me is when I feel this good, why do I always go back?  I really want to figure that out this year, so I win this battle for good.

Tomorrow I can't wait to post some numbers for my first week doing this cleanse.  The numbers are amazing.  I am shocked at how quickly they improve.

TRUTH

The TRUTH will set us free.  Lysa Terkeurst says in her book Made to Crave, "Truth is powerful.  The more saturated we are with truth, the more powerful we'll be in resisting our temptations.  I am listing some truths today, and not listing the lies that sometimes play in my head opposite of each truth.  "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."  John 8:32  I want to be FREE;  I want TRUTH.  By His grace may I see TRUTH, know TRUTH, and do TRUTH.

I am a child of God.
God loves me.
God created me for victory.  For a victorious relationship with Him.  As Lysa says, I am made for more.
I am overweight. Obese.
I can eat healthy foods.
I can exercise.
I can lose weight.
I can maintain a healthy weight.
I can rely on God's power to consistently make right choices.
I am not alone.  He will help me and empower me to see the truth, choose truth, and stop lying to myself, God, and others.

These are just a few of my truths.  I am ready to choose right.  I want this to be permanent.  No more going back to my old ways.  I have been asking God to help me, give me the wisdom, strength, knowledge, will power, desire to be victorious in this area.  Really I was beginning to to be desperately discouraged and hopeless.  Hopeless is never a good place to be.  All of it was compounded by the guilt that I was letting so many people down.  I love having a big family.  A family given to me by God to take care of, inspire, support, help, and be mamma dream maker for.  I have a husband who never says a negative word about me, but deserves a wife who doesn't already feel like she is 65 and wants to sleep all day.  Hopelessness permeated my soul daily when I saw all the lost possibilities slipping away because I am not the best me I should be.

God sent my angel friend.  She called from many states away and asked if I had heard of a book on healthy eating.  I shudder now when I think that my response was "if I buy one more diet book I will be in the Guinness Book of World Records."  She said she was ordering 2 books, so we could read them together.  I know God sent me this book.  It is changing my thinking and my life.  I am reading, highlighting, re-reading, and learning so much in this book.  Thank you Jesus for speaking to my sweet friend, for sending me this book, and for speaking to me through this book and in Your Word.

Along with this book I am doing My Clean Program again.  I have done two 21 day cleanses, and one 7 day cleanse using this Alejandro Junger, M.D. plan in CLEAN. I loved the results each time.  This is my third time.  My prayer this time is that with the help of Lysa's book and scripture, that I will continue to eat clean and make right choices so that I lose all of the weight I need to lose to be healthy.  I can only do this in His strength!

FEBRUARY GOALS


Stay on track with my reading through the Bible plan.
Follow the CLEAN program cleanse all 28 days of this month.
Move more.
Blog once a week.
Organize my eleven year old son's room.
Host Disciple Now weekend for my seventh grade daughter's class.


These goals may seem a little on the light side, but baby steps for me.  My main focus this month is on following the TRUTH and completing 28 days of the cleanse.

Southern Snow Daze

Today we had a school's out snow day. FUN!! It was not really good sledding snow, but enough accumulation for snowmen, angels, and of course snowball fights! It is January 2011, and I am back. I am back with a new weigh in of an additional 10 pounds added to my weigh in at the beginning of January 2010. Big UGH! If I keep this 10 year gain up, the year 2025 will be scary. So I am beginning again. Actually I began last week on Monday, January 3, 2011. I debated starting my healthy weight loss journey then, because I had a train trip to Chicago to do with my 7th grade daughter and her class. However, I realized that I always have an excuse and decided to dive in. My friend from afar and I agreed to text each other our weigh in progress every Monday. I am also going to record my progress on this blog every Monday too. Today I lost 3 pounds since last Monday. Yay! When I have a little more time, I will start recording the progress on the side. This is the year that I have got to get healthy!! I hope to record my journey on this blog more faithfully than I did last year! And of course I dream of posing in my little rose jacket for a blog picture sometime before 2012! Praying my dreams come true!

Stuck on an escalator

YO-YO QUEEN

That's me.  Master of the Yo-yo diet.  With a little help from Wikipedia I realize the analogies are endless.  There is the shape of the yo-yo: Imperial, Modified, and Butterfly, etc.  I'm not even going there on my yo-yo shape (including the weight distribution issue).  The yo-yo techniques caught my eye: more on that in a second.  The friction sources: how quickly the yo-yo returns to the hand of the player.  Performance accessories.  I might dedicate an entire blog to my performance accessories because they are endless.  Those accessories needed every time to succeed on my newest yo-yo journey, only to be left behind cluttering my closets and cupboards.  Your welcome Amazon and Target.

There are several yo-yo techniques with the basic one called sleeping.  How long the yo-yo can spin before traveling back up is the sleeping state.  On average however, I can spin for about 12 weeks before slowly climbing back up to my original weight.   I started this blog in January, of course, ready and willing to finally shed the weight.  You guessed it: I never wavered for a strong 12ish weeks.  Then I started my yo-yo journey back to my original January weight.  I succeeded with a bonus pound to boot.  Such an over achiever I am.  I am discouraged, sad, frustrated, but not without hope.  This month I am starting again. Praying I last longer than 12 weeks.  A lot happened this spring and summer and I hope to post a catch-up blog soon.  

So here I go again.  I'm starting slowly; taking one day at a time.  I am actually just trying to make it through today, and praying that will turn into a lot of successful days that turn into a lifetime of successful living.  I am healthy, here, blessed, thankful, and starting anew.  Thank God for new beginnings!!

Breaking News: Tomorrow is May

I realized in the middle of today that this is the last day of April.  Wow, I blinked and lost all of April and half of March.  So I pondered what important information to blog about on my one day of April blogging, and found myself overwhelmed with choices.  Do I update on the last 6 weeks, and if so do I start now and go backwards or start then catching up to now?  Okay, even that thought bores me.  So I'll wrap up the six weeks of non-blogging by saying they were very busy; hence no blogging.  I traveled on two college tours, hosted a lovely bridal shower, dealt with and continue to deal with a family situation,  entertained children for spring break, taught three grades, hosted Easter, hosted surprise out of town family, taught three grades, and generally tried not to get run over by the constant traffic of the revolving door in our house.

I am spending this week recovering from last Friday's event.  Seriously, I am getting old because a pound of work seems to require a pound of rest these days.   Just the memory of those hours of cleaning, shopping, ordering, cooking, organizing, and  NOT SLEEPING are making me tired this week.  So in honor of last weeks supermom impersonation, I am giving equal time to my slacker mom impersonation.  Lots of slacking and resting, which is probably wise considering there are 150 guests on the graduation party list for next week that will require me to dig out my supermom costume again.  I did think to myself and regrettably mention out loud to my better half that this place would be amazing if I worked that hard on a regular basis; I have got to learn to keep my thoughts to myself.

Anyway, what did happen last Friday?  Prom 2010.  32  prom kids plus parents at my house for pictures, followed by 26 prom kids staying for a fancy sit down meal prepared and served by parents.  I was a little doubtful we could pull it off, but it was delightful.  So much fun.  Lots of laughing in the promers area, and in the parental servers area.  My middle daughter even asked why so many parents stayed around long after the prom kiddos left for the big dance, and I thought she really doesn't see her mama hang out with friends enough!  Below are a few fun pictures of the event that consumed my week.  Oh, and my healthy journey progress?  I will try to post an update on that very soon!

The azaleas were picture perfect (see at top of blog), and my cleaning helpers were very excited.  What happens on cleaning day stays on cleaning day (especially from mom who is cleaning somewhere else.)

Here is my prom girl getting ready.  Below is how I still picture my prom girl getting ready. :)

The dinner tables were ready and waiting.

The pictures began; I'll spare you the 5 million and show you a few favorites.

Dinner is served.  My sweet daughter and her friend volunteered to serve dinner.  First they helped me make some fun salads.

Then everyone found their seats and began one of the loudest dinners I have ever witnessed.  Lots of singing and laughing involved.

Some cute sister pictures...one sister was gone for the evening.

And to end the pictures my prom girlie with her Toms for Prom.  She and her date decorated them the night before.