My Frenemy

Just a quick post to confess I have a frenemy.  My  frenemy is sometimes so nice to me.  So nice that I brag on her to my husband, my mother, my children and any other innocent bystander willing to smile at me. I sing her praises through emails and announce her blessings in countless texts.  And then, just when I think we are getting along so well and she is treating me so generously, she knocks the wind out of my sails plummeting me into sadness and despair.  Usually I return this mistreatment by refusing to visit my frenemy.  Well, let's be honest here...I also say a lot of bad things about her before deciding a long break from my disappointing frenemy is in order.

This morning she did it to me again.  That is the thing about those frenemys; you can never quite trust them. After days of getting along so amazingly well she told me I had gained 1 1/2 pounds.  How could that be?  I think maybe I should replace her and add dishonesty to her list of bad labels.  I quickly review in my head my perfect cleanse diet from the prior day while I try to go potty four more times.  She tells me the same thing, and instead of telling her I am done with her....moving on...eating whatever I so desire on the planet.....I decide I am in this for the long haul.  Her voice, and it's a loud voice, will not determine my success.  I will keep on keeping on, and I will see her again tomorrow morning.  Cause that is what good and determined people do....love their frenemies!

Dog Day

Yesterday was Dog Day at the school three of my daughters attend.  It was fun and out of my box to stuff hot dogs and see my girlies in their element.  I came home with a little over an hour to check on my home boys and create a clean lunch before heading back for pick-up.  I was a little tired and happy to be home as I stared in the fridge deciding what to eat.  Normally I would have wanted a little "reward" meal.  Something yummy with way too many calories to celebrate my morning.  It reminded me of a lot of past Sundays when I  woke up in a panic realizing I was going to have to try to squeeze into my only remaining black pants that fit; the ones that barely fit the week before.  It is very stressful wondering if this week will be the week the pants finally don't zip.  It doesn't usually put me in a worshipful mindset.  Armed with my slimming undies and Spanx  I would somehow fit into them, and feeling like a stuffed sausage waddle around church, BUT as soon as I got home from church and pulled off those tight clothes I was ready to relax.  Ready to rest and rejoice that I had pulled it off another week.  So instead of beginning right then my new healthy eating that would help those pants fit better the next week, I would "rest" in my comfort foods .....after all who diets on Sunday right?  That cycle of course led to the next Sunday of stuffing myself into clothes that were too tight,clothes I wore over and over, and clothes that were not fooling anyone...except maybe me.

With the cleanse eating my comfort foods was not an option.  Thank goodness.  I baked a healthy clean chicken breast and added some veggies.  Instead of "resting and relaxing" in my food, I rested in my memories of the morning, the little boys hugging on me, and God who is so good to me.  It was so much better than loading up on sugar and zoning out of life into a sugar fog, followed by depression and exhaustion.  Boundaries give me freedom.  I usually think they are so restrictive. This clean eating is freeing me in so many ways.  Everyone has there own boundaries and trigger foods.  I am learning refined sugar is gonna have to be one of mine.  When I try to eat it in moderation all I can think about is wanting more.  When I put the no eating boundary around sugar, that boundary actually frees me because I don't long for it nearly as much.  I wish I could handle a bite here and there like a lot of people seem to do.  Since I cannot, I am going to need to put boundaries around it when my cleanse is done.                                                                            Below is what I ate on Friday.

Mr. Sweet Hubby made me an energy smoothie while I got ready to leave for Dog Day.  It had peaches, almond butter, cinnamon, and coconut milk in it.  It energized me for 3 hours of hot dog stuffing!

Me hugging my Mr. Little Man (baby of the family) before heading out the door.  Notice his bangs please.

Me doing a rare thing...letting someone photograph me.  Ugh.  My 11year old son did a great job. My face puts on a lot of weight when I gain weight.  Hopefully the puffiness will be totally gone in 6 months.  Calling this my before shot since I was too scared to take one even 12 pounds higher in January.

Lunch was a garlic dijon mustard chicken breast with some steamed broccoli and carrots.

My afternoon snack was a bowl of crunchy apple slices with 1/3 cup of cashews.  I was so hungry that I did not share any of these today!

There they are.  Did you notice the bangs above?  Mr. Little Man decided to try out his barber skills while I was enjoying my apples and cashews.  After discovering this I decided it was time for dinner!

Dinner was a berry smoothie.  I ate the second serving this morning for breakfast, and now I am headed to eat the other garlic dijon chicken breast for lunch!  I was down another pound this morning bringing my cleanse weight loss totals to 11.5 pounds in 11 days.   I am off to organize my 11 year olds room...I hope!

A

Eating to Live

The amazing part about eating to live instead of living to eat is I do really feel like I am LIVING MORE.  When every meal and snack is not an obsession, when I am not planning a party in my mouth daily, when I am not pacing the kitchen searching for the perfect chocolate snack, when my body is not overloaded on sugar I begin to see, REALLY SEE other things.  I have so much more energy to straighten the areas that seemed so overwhelming just two weeks ago.  I am exercising and reading and folding laundry and hugging children as they come and go.  Living more means feeling more too, and I am experiencing these rounds of complete euphoria where I am overwhelmed with happiness bringing tears along with it.  Of course feeling more means it seems like the drama in my head is slightly more intense when I feel overwhelmed here or there, but still nothing like the hopelessness I was feeling two weeks ago.  More like a frustration that I need to work through.  Discussing schedules this morning while handing out lunches I commented that I was not going to be happy about something and my daughter #3 said,"Mom, I know what to do about that. (Me thinking ...good, a solution?) Just BE HAPPY."  I unhappily ....very unhappily thought about that little statement after she walked out the door, and after I got over myself realized she is right.  I am no Pollyanna, but I am a very blessed and loved child of God, content to by His grace LIVE LIFE aware and hopefully mainly happy in everything that crosses my path today.

Yesterday was another great day.  Below is what I ate between snow fun excursions.

Two berry smoothies.  One for me and one for my sweet hubby.

I squeezed in 34 minutes on this.  Not great time, but I am concentrating on the cleanse and just moving right now.  Next month I hope to start ramping up the exercise including weights.

I had 1/3 cup of cashews while driving children around, and this plate of hummus and veggies for lunch.

Dessert was once again crunchy and juicy apples.  My hubby ate half of these.

Dinner was one Valentine cup with green juice from the day before.


The scale is going down and my other numbers are still amazing me also.  I am off to serve food at the school  hot dog day.  They tell me I will be stuffing several hundred dogs.  Well I pray I will be doing it happily...daughter #3 might be watching.  I am off to make a peach almond butter smoothie for extra energy!

Had to throw in a picture or two of daughter #3 taken last weekend before the big dance.

And not to leave anyone out, behold daughter #2 who mixed it up a little for this dance.

Have a great Friday everyone!  This is the year for VICTORY!!!!

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.