Clean Deliciousness

Yesterday was day 9 of my cleanse and everything I ate tasted wonderful.  I was so overdosed on sugar during the holidays that I think my taste buds grew numb.  They are rejuvenated and loving my healthy meals.

        Breakfast was the yummy mango pineapple smoothie in my winter snowflake glass.  Yum.

                                                                 Frothiness.  Yum again.

                                                           Gotta add that straw!

It began snowing at my house.  Biggest year for snow ever in my almost 19 years of living in west Tennessee.

    While I watched the loverly snow fall I ate my lunch. Fish topped with lemon and spinach, steamed broccoli, spaghetti squash, and Fuji apple slices (not pictured) that tasted divine.  My taste buds are alive if this girl who usually hates apples relishes them like they are Ghirardelli   Chocolates.

  After an afternoon of wrapping up some school with my two brother stooges and hitting my elliptical for 34 minutes,  I fed the family some hot and spicy pizza, had a handful of cashews, took a warm shower, juiced my apple, lemon, spinach, ginger juice (below), and settled in for family movie night.  After all the energy I had last week on my cleanse, my system finally decided last night was the time for a little rest and I couldn't make it through all of the movie.  The day has come when I am snoring at 10 PM and my teenagers and hubby are shutting down the house way past me.  Oh but somehow that down comforter feels so much snugglerific when there is shiny snow outside my windows.

     Yesterday was a really good day, and by His grace I am looking forward to another one today.  This is the year for VICTORY!!!!  Now I am going to brave the roads to chauffeur my group to various sledding locations!                                                                          

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!!