6/26/10 Disappointed With My Results Lately....

                                                                          
Tell me, have you ever felt this way?  Do you seem to be doing everything right to accomplish your goals but are making little if any progress?  That's where I am right now unfortunately with my health goals.   I know a big, big part of it is that I get to be more disciplined getting up earlier and going right to the Word of God first thing and gleaning what's important daily, but I've been sporadic.  I read it regularly, but not with the regimen that I need or It (the Bible) deserves.  

                                                                        
                                                                                                    
I haven't had sugar in my regular diet for months now and I am diligent with my T-Tapp exercise.  I've seen little improvement around my waist, abs or hips.   I'm now increasing the amount of workouts to see if that helps.   I don't eat a lot of processed foods, so my metabolism is slower than the average person's.  T-Tapp at least keeps me from gaining any weight should I eat something out of the usual that is more fattening.  I was so sure I'd have better results by now.  I could see some improvements in the beginning.  Yes, I'm only doing the 15 minute Basic Work-Out Plus, but I've been very consistent doing it nearly every day.  I keep reminding myself of all the great results so many have had just doing this work-out alone like Steve on the video.  I won't give up, but I do get to work on this discouragement factor!

With this chronic hip bursitis and arthritic foot pain, I'm unable to do other sporty things like walking, running, biking etc without exacerbating it.  Swimming isn't really an option either since we don't have free pool access nearby.  I'm starting to add squats with bicep curls to my daily routine.  I already do push-ups as well.  The more I work-out the large cell muscle groups the better I will burn fat, or so I've been told and read over the years.  I know I should start using my husband's Bowflex for more work on hamstrings and the back muscles, but I allow myself to be intimidated by that machine and have decided that walking upstairs through the attic to get to the work-out room is like traveling to the other side of Siberia.                
                                                                      
I was so hoping to see obvious improvements besides my slimmer arms and slightly thinner thighs, but I'm not.  My husband says my face looks a little slimmer too, but after seeing photos of myself from vacation last week, I'm not sure anything really looks slimmer.  Am I putting too much importance on being a healthier weight?  Why is it so hard to see my progress?

                                                                

I realize that these setbacks or frustrations are important for me to experience and that I can work through it Biblically.  I get to stay encouraged that I'm putting my trust in the Lord to lead me down the right path in all ways including health.  I'm praying for continued willingness and endurance as I seek the Lord's guidance and encouragement.

                                                                                

"Father you are our Redeemer, Counselor and Friend please forgive me for my lack of diligence with my prayer life and time in Your precious Word.  Thank you for all the precious Scripture and and Godly people you've been providing through this journey!  Please help me to see what you teaching me.   Please guide me and train me Lord into better spiritual and physical health.  Please also show me Lord new insights and concepts to support others achieve their health and spiritual goals as well.  To you Jesus be all the glory and forever praised!  Amen. "

6/09/10 "First Fruits"

Sometimes I feel like the woman in this picture walking on a high wire.  There she is trying to keep her balance as she moves forward while the waves of distraction try to knock her off her course.  Does anyone else ever feel that way?  What is the high wire and what is below it?  What are the obstacles?

Why does it seem so hard to see my little victories lately?  I do a lot of things right like preparing my food before work, but at home I don't always choose nutrient dense foods.  I'm keeping up with my T-Tapp exercise incredibly well though.  I do my exercises wherever I may be in the world even without the dvd.  I've done them so much I know every exercise by heart.  It's like I turn on a tape of Teresa Tapp in my head and go to work.  I even find my self saying to myself "Yes you can!" and "You did it!" like Teresa says faithfully each work-out.

                                                                                    

I see the inches coming off slowly now and there isn't much weight loss.  I keep telling myself that I'm losing fat and gaining muscle which is why I'm not seeing much weight loss yet.  Is the 15 minute a day T-Tapp Basic Work-Out Plus isn't enough for me right now?  Should I double up?  I am determined to make the 15 Minute Basic Work-Out Plus work for me.  I've seen the results others have had from doing just this work-out alone which is a real inspiration.

I've done a great job keeping off the sugar.  I did have a small bite of lemon cake a friend prepared for tea the other day, but it was out of politeness and not a craving.  I may be doing great with sugar, but sometimes I do get a hankering for cheese or meat.  The day I came home from my last work trip I took a small 8oz tub of cream cheese which was 2/3 full and ate it with a spoon.  Funny huh?  Well, then I took a few clawfuls of meat off a rotisserie chicken and devoured it.  I felt like I was breaking the law or something!  Most of the time I eat veggies and fish.  Sometimes more fish than veggies though.
                                                         

To me what's really missing here is something so basic, obvious and important.  It is the key that got me started on this path to health and kept me steady.  That missing link is my scheduled prayer and scripture time.  I've been winging it by praying here and there and looking up scripture when it suits me.  I've not made my time with the Lord my first priority of the day or as they say, I'm not giving Him my "first fruits."  Without the Lord as my foundation for each day of my life, I might as well just be a leaf blowing in the wind.

It's time to redirect and rededicate myself to the goals before me.  "Prayer that is born of meditation upon the Word of God is the prayer that soars upward most easily to God's listening ears."  R.A. Torrey

5/22/10 The Battle For Balance Continues....

I guess with all these changes in my food and exercise habits comes the awkwardness of adaption - the desire to pull away and go back to where I was.  Sometimes I feel completely on top of this healthier new lifestyle and other times I seem to barely stay afloat when my old, less-than-healthy habitual self cries out "What about me?"  "Did you forget about my needs?"  That's when I'm most vulnerable to overeat or make an addictive food choice.  

                                
For a couple weeks I had some sugar free candy and pudding on hand for those less than courageous moments.  It's funny but when I'm on my trips for work I don't battle that little food addict's voice like I do once I'm home in my familiar territory and daily life.  Looks like I have more praying and work to do on kicking the psychological side of food addiction.  

"If we allow the Bible to reveal the unseen spiritual realities behind addictions, we suddenly realize that addictions are more than self-destructive behaviors. They are violations of God’s laws: His laws that call us to avoid drunkenness and immoderate self-indulgence (Rom. 13:13), His law that calls us to love others (1 John 4:7), and His law that calls us to live for Him rather than ourselves (1 Cor. 10:31). This means that addiction is more about someone’s relationship with God than it is about biology. It reveals our allegiances: what we want, what we love, whom and what we serve. It brings us to that all-important question, “Will you live for the fulfillment of your desires or for God?" Edward T. Welch "Blame in on the Brain?" P&R Publishing, 1998, p. 193.

 When I start to lean too much on myself, I get a reality check that I can't do it alone.  Packing food from home for my trips is helpful and so is having good food in the pantry, but without dependence on the Lord and His Holy Spirit dwelling within me, my personal resolve only goes so far.

I am strengthened most by reading God's Word and standing in His promises.  Prayer is another powerful exercise of faith and trust that lays the foundation for each day.  

5/15/10 So Far So Good With The T-Tapp Challenge!

Today I decided to retake all my measurements that I submitted for the contest last week to see my progress.  To my joy I discovered I've lost anywhere from .25 to .75 inches in each area!  Yeah!  Double Yeah!  I still have a long way to go, but what a great start!  Just shows me the importance of exercise!  Here I was eating great, but without the movement of T-Tapp, etc, my fruit was limited.  Let's go team!

5/15/10 I Entered The T-Tapp Challenge!

As Teresa Tapp would say, "Yes you can!"  I signed up last week for the annual T-Tapp 60 Day challenge.  T-Tapp is this awesome regiment of exercises that Teresa Tapp, who worked in the physical therapy field, came up with.  According to the T-Tapp website:  "T-Tapp is a series of copyrighted, sequential movements designed to put the body in proper functional alignment. Its special sequence of comprehensive, compound muscle movement helps establish better alignment as well as increased strength and flexibility of the spine, better neuro-kinetic flow, lymphatic function, and increased metabolic rate. Its physical therapy approach to fitness makes it safe for those with shoulder, hip, knee, neck, and back concerns. Yet, it delivers a challenging workout for all fitness levels!"  http://www.t-tapp.com/faq/what-is-ttapp.html

So I've taken on this challenge with full abandon!  I've been doing the exercises nearly every day.  If I measured myself correctly this morning, I've already lost 3/4 of an inch around my waist in a week's time!  The challenge started officially on May 7th and ends on June 7th.  I've found that exercise is so important in addition to eating right whether you are trying to lose weight or just stay healthy.  Everything just works together so much better when you take care of your body like that.  It's amazing how my allergies are in check as well as my chronic hip, foot, back and neck pain.  Way to go Eat To  Live & T-Tapp!! 

                                                          "Yes You Can!"
                                                              (Teresa Tapp)
            For more info on T-Tapp, please go to http://www.t-tapp.com/

5/14/10 A Walk Through History...

 As much as I would like a positive declaration and attitude to be sufficient in the road to weight loss, it's much more complicated than that.  Sure it will take hard work to lose weight, but even that effort and discipline doesn't guarantee it will all come off or stay off.  If we are to truly get out from the inertia and comfort of addictive eating, we must look back on how it all began.  For some it's a lifetime, for others it may be a decades, years or months.  When and what caused the shift from healthy to unhealthy food choices?
As much as I want to stay in this feel good mode I'm in now,  I need to also look back at my weight gain history to see how, when and why it may have happened.  If I don't try to understand and study this personal history, then that old saying "History will repeat itself," could become a reality for me once more.  I've come too far now to allow myself to gently fall back into my old self defeating eating habits and choices again.

Looking back into my personal  history vault, I see my first real issue with weight gain happening after our miscarriage in the fall of 1997 which was within a year after my father's death.  In the summer of 1997, we had our first round of IVF which looked successful at first, but then began to unravel before I hardly began to show.  It seemed that 2 of the 3 embryos took.  However, one  died shortly after implantation and then just days shy of my second trimester, the other one died as well.  It was earth shattering.   It felt like this quest for children would remain unanswered forever.  It also seemed that no one else seemed to understand the pain of infertility that we were going through.
That Thanksgiving shortly after our miscarriage, it was as if we were expected to act like nothing happened and join the family for dinner, etc.  I remember being desperate for validation of my feelings.  My husband and I both agreed it was too soon to be surrounded by a house full of children and chose not to join the festivities that year.  I remember measuring my waist during my pregnancy and how it was obviously growing.  After the baby was gone the expanded waist size stayed.  I just couldn't shake the extra inches and pounds.  Then I took more infertility drugs for further procedures to no avail and the weight seemed to be steadily creeping up little by little.

I tried Atkins and the South Beach diets.  I finally joined Weight Watchers and  lost almost 30 pounds.  I got back into running and walking fairly regularly and was experiencing good health.  Around that time, just three years after our miscarriage, we adopted our precious daughter.   A couple years later we moved into a new home.  It was at that time I made a pretty stupid choice took some Adderal pills I had left from when I was convinced I had ADD.  I took them like one would take uppers while redecorating our new home.  I'd stay up super late plastering and wall papering, etc.  The next day I'd do it again.  Here I was, a stay at home mom doing all the things a mom does for her child in addition to getting everything done at record speed with the help of the Adderal.  Oh, it all got done quickly alright.  I removed and wallpapered 7 rooms within a week.  I even plastered and faux painted one of the bathrooms.  As you can imagine, operating on little sleep and a lot of adrenaline shortchanged my family, especially our daughter considerably.   I'd get so disappointed and resentful when she stopped napping at 2 years old.  I remember one particularly stressful day when I tossed my daughter onto the bed, shut the bedroom door and yelled from the other side, "NOW GO TO SLEEP!!"  My poor daughter just wailed until I came to my senses shortly after and rescued her from her nap time imprisonment.  I was getting irritable and moody regularly.  Where did my faith go during this time?  Where did I let God into my daily reality?  I would read the Bible only selectively.  Sure I was going to church, but I wasn't really focused on the teachings or implementing what the Bible taught in my home.  I decided to see a Psychiatrist who was convinced after a 5 minute question/answer review with me that I must be manic depressive.  I never divulged that I'd been misusing Adderal nor did he ask what medicines I was taking.  I was eager to stop being irritable and moody so I took the medications he  prescribed. However, the medicine he gave me just made things worse and gave me side effects of anxiety and weight gain.  I was not only anxious now, but constantly hungry.  The pounds started pouring on.

It wasn't until about a year later that we realized I was mot only misdiagnosed with ADD, but Manic Depression as well.  There are definitely real cases of these illnesses out there, but there are many people like myself that are hastily misdiagnosed with some sort of mental illness due to a temporary stressful situation or other influences and given potent medicines as a quick fix instead.  I'm just thankful we didn't continue blindly down the "I'm different so there must be something wrong with me" path.

So I got off all those meds that were an attempt to fix something that wasn't broken, but still had the extra pounds from the treatment to deal with.  I tried Weight Watchers again, but this time it didn't seem to click for me.  I was getting fed up with my lackluster results and asked my husband if he and his Bible study group would add me to their prayer list.  Within a week I found out about the book "Eat To Live,"

by Dr. Joel Fuhrman thanks to one of our employees.  I read this book from cover to cover and made the connection not only between food and addictive eating, but between food and disease.  I stopped eating animal products and started feeling better almost immediately.  The weight fell off and before I knew it, I was venturing into a 40 day fast.  In the first week of the fast I was off all my asthma medicine.  I did so well sticking to a mostly vegan diet.  Fast forward to 2007-2009 and I see myself choosing to make less than healthy food choices while under the stress of our financial situation and then losing both of my mother and father-in-law a week apart from each other.  It's not necessarily that I was simply using food as a comfort, but that I let my defenses down so to speak.  I chose to conveniently "forget" on a consistent basis, why I had originally chosen not to eat certain foods.  I was now eating cheese,  meats, sweets and other fatty processed foods that are highly addictive.  Before I new it I gained 30 pounds and was starting to wheeze again.

 So here I am today since I bit the bullet and chose to get off the mindless eating train.  I am nowhere close to my healthy goal weight yet, but I'm implementing healthy habits and choices daily.  I get to continue to stay grounded in the One who created me through prayer and His Holy Word.   As AW Tozar once said "An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him very quickly."

It is those times when I was scattered in my focus and didn't look to God solely for the support I needed that I've tarried into times of stress and the less than stellar fruits of those stresses.  Yes, a journey into one's history vaults can be a little dark at times, but it's just for a visit not a season.  As I revisit those dark places I do so with the lamp of the Lord.  "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path."  Psalm 119:105 

5/08/10 Veggie Breakthroughs For My Family

                                                          
Where to begin?  Well let me start by saying that except for some tuna I had earlier this week, I've stayed with my goal of eating vegan as well as staying away from sugar, dairy and oil! Occasionally I may have one piece of sugar free candy though but no biggie urges or anything.

In the past I may have been great sticking with a wholesome diet, but it was a challenge to get my family on board.  Especially my daughter.  Lo and behold, we had a major breakthrough in the veggie open mindedness department this week!    Hooray!!  My daughter has always been good about eating a salad, and certain familiar veggies like green beans, corn, potatoes, broccoli and asparagus, but that was about the extent of it.  I guess her veggie openmindedness started a few months ago when she started accepting some spinach in her salads along with some other wild and crazy stuff I was adding.  This week she ate and enjoyed portobello  mushrooms, eggplant, zucchini, brown rice, cauliflower and an assortment of beans!  It certainly helps that I've been using "The McDougall Quick & Easy (vegan) Cookbook!"  A quick thank you and shout out to Lisa for lending me this invaluable book!  Thank you sister girl!   I've also found some great online vegan recipes.  Hopefully the next veggie breakthrough for the family will be cooked spinach, bok choy and collard greens.  We'll take it one veggie at a time though!  :-)

My husband and I have been having blended salad smoothies nearly every morning this week except for the morning after we got back from 5 hours in ER for complications from his broken rib he incurred from a biking accident over the weekend.  Thankfully he's doing better now since he's been resting under doctors orders.  I'm now grateful also that I was sick earlier this week which caused me to drop my work trip to Zurich.   I was supposed to be in Zurich Thursday when I rushed him to the hospital at 2 in the morning!  Thank you Lord for working that out for us!

These cookbook recipes truly are good in a pinch and have helped me tremendously this week.  Recipes we especially enjoyed so far are: Beans Florentine, Turnip Green Salad, Ratatouille and Cauliflower Poppers.  Yum!  Yum!  Yum!  Feeling like chilling tonight though.  Our daughter has been hanging out with a friend today who will be staying for dinner too so we may make a meat exception for them or I may go pick up Chinese.  We'll see.

Praying that my husband heals well, that I continue to be resourceful with the veggies and that everyone is willing and open to eat them!