Tuesday already

Well, here it is Tuesday, and it's been several days since I wrote anything. I'm staying the course on my eating and exercising, so I'm happy with that. I ran at the gym yesterday for like 25 minutes...wanted to do more, but we got there a little late and the childcare was only open til 8pm, so I had to get the kiddies and go. Tonight was the same sort of thing, only I did the elliptical. Last night I ended up doing an overnight shift at work, so I'm pretty certain I made up for the extra 5 minutes by running around the lab until 6 am! It was a good night, thankfully! Today, all the treadmills were full, so I used the elliptical, and I was sweated down pretty good by the time I finished up. It felt great! I ran into one of my old Young Life kids tonight too, which was fun. She and I talked about the last 10 minutes or so of my workout, so it went super fast! My weight is down to like hovering around 231 or 232...I've been saying I'm down probably 15 pounds since I started this whole thing.....I'm not totally sure where I topped out at, but It was somewhere mid-to-high 240s, so I'm thinking I'm right at 15 pound gone...now only 85 more! I'm looking forward to breaking that 230 barrier to get to the 220s. And then the 2-teens, and for sure getting down below 200 into ONEderland. I'm way ready for that! How awful is that, that I'm looking forward to the 220s! I never in my life thought I'd be making progress to make it there! It feels so much better though, to be working on it.

The next project is giving up chocolate...at least for awhile. I'm going at this with 2 ideas in mind, actually. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday....the beginning of the Lenten season. Now, having grown up as the Baptist that I did, the only "lint" (ph. spelling) I knew of was in my dryer! I never knew a thing about Lent or any of the creeds, or any other kind of liturgy! I will say I grew up with a healthy knowledge of scripture (commited to memory) which I am so very grateful for today. I also grew up with the awareness that God was God and I'm not, and that there was a definite right and wrong....I'm very, very grateful for that, but being the Presbyterian that I am now in this season of my life (and probably for the rest of my life, if I had to guess...only the Lord knows!) I am excited to learn new things (new to me, that is) and to learn to love the Lord with more of my mind than before, and take on some more challenges. Enter Lent!

This year, I've decided for the first time ever, to give something up for Lent....I've never done it, and I'm not going ot make a big deal of it or anything, but it is sort of a big deal to me! I'm going to give up chocolate. I DO love Jesus more than chocolate, and I want to exercise some much-needed discipline with it during this season. I want to instead of focusing on chocolate, to focus on Him and what He wants to do in and through me. Now, for some people, chocolate may not be a biggie....but for me, it's HUGE! I gave up chocolate once before, but only because I was pregnant with my high-risk pregnancy where they were watching everything I did like crazy and wanted me to have NO caffeine...which meant no chocolate. Well, that lasted til the end of my first trimester, and then it promptly ended when my healthcare professionals thought it safe for me to eat it again. So, it's sort of a big deal to me...I am a chocolate lover....but I'm hoping to curb that love to some degree through this!

The other motivation I have, which does tie into trying to be the best I can be for His glory, but still an independent concept, is the Chantel Hobbs book. Her phase 1 is the exercise 5x a week for 4 weeks. Phase 2 is to keep that up, add some strength training with the stability ball, and then to identify a problem food (just one) and keep away from it for a month. Well....it just so happens that this is week 4 of my hard-core working on this, and so it would have been next week anyway that I would have had to give up a problem food....and for me, by far the biggest problem is CHOCOLATE!

So, I'm just starting this phase a little early, and trying to exercise it as a spiritual discipline as well, connecting it with the Lenten season. So....Fat Tuesday being about over....no chocolate, here I am!