20 lbs Is A Charm

  I am excited because I am nearly at my 10% goal since starting Weight Watchers in February! I need 8 tenths of a pound to get a key ring and start collecting my charms. I wish I could count those 7 lbs I lost before starting the meetings, but I know that it is gone and that is enough reward. I plan on Walking/running a 5k (which is 3.1 miles) by May 22 for the W.W. 5k challenge. I will get my first charm for that. I am very excited and feel like a different person already! Thank you God for helping me to believe in myself!
  I am eating healthy meals and encouraging my family to do the same. I have looked up super foods and started eating spinach instead of regular lettuce. My portions have gotten smaller and my energy is increasing. I love it when I can set a goal and actually achieve it!!

Not Mine, But Thine Lord

   After trying to succeed on my own, I have realized that I can only control what is within my power to control. The question is..... Do I have power over my eating, my daily walk, my talk, my every move, my every temptation, my every thought? Nope. No one has! Not as long as they are in this body. Realization is... I sin. I take things for granted. I expect to solve things on my own and then go to God when I can't handle it myself. Sound familiar? If so, then you are admitting that you are human too.

   So what I did next has been a revelation to myself and others. I talked to God and said, "Lord, I turn this over to you. Free me from this cycle of eating too much". Then I got out a notebook and dated Wednesday, March 16 and I wrote everything I had eaten that day. EVERYTHING. I left nothing out and didn't fudge at all on the amounts of foods that I had consumed. My total was 48 points. That was 19 points over my daily points allowance. I wrote my weight down too. It was then down to 194.4.

    I wrote that exact prayer on the bottom of that page and It was like God said, "Go to My Word and I will guide you". I opened up my Bible to the 17th chapter of Matthew. At the top of the next page in my notebook, I wrote this verse...If you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will be moved and nothing will be impossible for you.

   My mountain is being moved! This mountain of belly fat has made me have digestion problems, made my blood pressure extremely high, made my legs hurt, my energy low, my joints achy. I could go on and on. I know that to some people this doesn't seem like a case of severe obesity, but even 10 extra pounds can make a difference when it comes to your health. An extra 50  lbs has been taking a toll on my body and my self esteem for many years.

   God has helped me to start writing down scripture and recording my prayer journal along with my food journal. I haven't missed a day of being honest, being prayerful and thanking God for what he is doing within my body. This body is not mine. It is a vessel that I am borrowing while here on earth. But, God expects me to take care of it so it can be used for His glory. So I try to remember every day; "Not Mine, But Thine Lord. Not Mine, But Thine."

                                               

                                          Here I am today!!!!    April 7th at 184 lbs.!!!!!!

                                                                             

 

Little Debbie is NOT my friend!

                                                                            
  I have had a rough week and weighing in after a bad week is dreadful! Headaches and not journaling all week can cause someone to be tempted to skip a meeting. But I sucked it up and went on my merry way to WW. When I stepped on the scale, I closed my eyes and waited for the bad news.
   It is a very intense moment when you weigh in, because you cannot see your numbers anyway. The lady looks at her little screen and starts writing in your booklet. You have to kinda peer over at it or wait for her to hand it to you. Of course if you lose any, she says "congratulations", but I had went ahead and let her and those around me know that I was expecting a gain. She says "Not too bad, only a two tenths gain. Try stepping off the scale and blowing out all your air and let me weigh you again". I thought she was joking. Then she says "Go ahead, it works sometimes". I stepped back (feeling rather stupid), blew out all my air, stepped back on the scale and guess what??? It didn't work.
   Well I just thanked God for such a low gain. I made sure to tell the class to always count before eating when you are sick, because I had ate four Little Debbie Oatmeal Cakes the day before this meeting (not all at one time). I had been sick with a terrible headache and a gigantic appetite for carbs. When I counted the points I had eaten twenty points in Little Debbie cakes alone!!! My daily limit is twenty nine. We all concluded that day that Little Debbie is not our friend.

No More Monkeying Around

                                                        No More Monkeying Around!

     Wow! I had a good week on my 3rd. weigh in. I lost 3.8 lbs. for a total of 13lbs. down. Actually I need to say "shed" or "got rid of" those pounds, because when you lose something it sounds like you need to find it. So anyway, I had a good week. I decided to start attending the Saturday morning meetings because I was planning to attend a water exercise class on Monday nights. But, during this Saturday meeting they were talking about using the 48 bonus points each week. I had not been using mine, but I had not measured exactly and had guessed on some points values.
   I had not journaled but three days this week either. One lady said she used her bonus points after her weigh in as a reward. I had not had a "reward" in a month. I left that meeting thinking "What is my favorite thing to eat?" A reward should be heavenly, right?
   So my choice was a pecan log roll. A small one, of course. So I left the meeting and stopped at two convenience stores only to find that nobody had any. A peanut butter delight wouldn't do. It had to be a pecan log roll!!! So I thought about the CVS close by and guess what?  No luck there either. Well, wouldnt'you know that my 14 yr. old son was calling my cell, wondering where I was.
    I had to get home but I was like a shark on the hunt for blood. So I stopped at one more gas station and grabbed a Reeces cup. Before I got home I stopped at another store to throw away the wrapper. I felt really guilty and hid the evidence of my error from my family. I didn't write down my foods for the next week either. What a slump. Something had to give and I needed to stop this monkey business. But how????

  I can't believe I let myself get to the size I was in this picture. I had so much heartburn, so many aches and pains. But that was then and this is now. So lets get back to my weight loss journey.
    I was at my second WW meeting and I saw that I had lost only 2.2 lbs. I thought I would lose more than that in water weight. But slow and steady is suppose to be the way to go and I accepted that. I listened to the stories and was encouraged to do well the next week. I left the meeting and went to the local bowling alley where my husband is in a league. As soon as I walked in, the food smell hit my nose. They just had to put the snack bar right beside the front door. I could smell french fries and burgers.
   Temptation was setting in. As I turned the corner, lo was behold, there was a display of candy bars. I spotted the Reeces Cups but turned away real quick like. It was hard to endure. I went and got a cup of sweet tea just to get a bit of sugar and made it through the night.
 The next day I realized I didn't count that tea nor had I been counting any of the sweet tea I had drank all week. Honesty was yet to be acquired when it came to my food log and it would show eventually. Oh well, another week to do better!!!