God is in the donut...

So, God helped me through a moment of weakness, today...

I had decided to go through the drive-thru at Dunkin’ Donuts today to get some coffee to take back to the office for my “afternoon treat”. First, though, I had to stop by Publix to pick up some fat-free creamer (cuz I was out).

Did that.

Headed to Dunkin’.

Problem... I had a coupon in my purse for a free donut with the purchase of a beverage. I’d gotten it last week when I stopped by and did the same thing (coffee for my afternoon treat).

So, I told my husband, before I left home and headed to the store, that I wasn’t going to get the donut. Because it’s best to speak it out loud whenever you’re having to make a tough decision. But secretly inside, I really wanted to go ahead and get the donut.

#1. It was free.

#2. It was within my daily points plus allowance because I’ve made a list of 5 donuts I can get that are either 6 or 7 pts+ (As long as I plan for these extra pts+ I can have them!). Hey, I like donuts, okay?!

#3. I could eat it on my way back to work and no one would be the wiser.

So I pull up to the Dunkin’ drive-thru and order my coffee—decaf, black. I pulled up to the pay window and it dawned on me that I forgot to order my free donut!

I thought, well, it’s not too late, I can still order it when the guy comes and hands me my coffee. But then my mind went blank as to what the 6 and 7 pts+ donuts were. Completely blank!

I pull out my phone, because I’d made a sticky note on the desktop of my phone that had the 5 donuts listed out.

Too late.

The guy came with my coffee and I would have had to have him hold on while I look on my phone, which I felt woulda been silly for me to do. So I gave up. Handed him the money for the coffee and drove away.

No free donut.

So, I think God did something like holding his hand over my eyes, or rather in this case my memory, so I wouldn’t remember to order the donut and I couldn’t remember what type was the lowest in pts+.

Thanks, God. Wait, did that sound sarcastic? Uh, yea, it sure did.


...


But I REALLY wanted the donut!

Turning onto a new path in my weight loss journey...

I've turned a corner in my weight loss journey.

Well, no, wait a minute... not in my weight loss journey, but in my heart.

The most I can hope from this turn, is to not do a u-turn and head back down the path I've been on for the past couple of years.

As many of you might know, I've been on Weight Watchers since May 2007. So in a couple of months, I'll have been trying to reach my goal weight for FOUR YEARS. (yikes) I still haven't reached goal. 

Sure, I've reached major milestones along my journey, all of which I'm extremely proud of, but I haven't reached my ultimate goal weight yet.

Well, now I hope with this new turn, I can get there.

A little bit of history about my weight loss journey, for those of you who are new. Weight Watchers has taught me SO much about how to eat right. It's taught me what foods are good for my body and bad for my body. It's taught me that I can eat whatever I want to eat as long as I eat responsibly and watch my portions. It's taught me proper exercise. And an all around healthy look at the way I eat.

I've also tried a few other diet plans along the way, though none of them I've stuck with for very long. Maybe even a few weeks at a time. But each time I dabbled in something different, I learned so much more about foods and how they interact with my body.

I learned a great deal from the Eat Clean Diet. Man, if you ever want to learn exactly what food does to your body, that's the place to start. My husband tried a medical weight loss diet and I learned  a lot from his journey about carbs and sugars and protein and how they break down in your body for the good and bad.

So, all in all, I'd say I have a pretty good grasp on how to diet, or rather how to eat right and exercise to lose weight.

But here I sit, still 30 pounds from my ultimate goal (20 pounds from my Weight Watchers goal).

I was almost at my wits end when I recently stumbled across a lady who'd written a book about cravings. It started me to thinking about how throughout the 200+ blog posts and 4 years of daily eating and exercise habits, it has always come back to cravings for me. That's always been my down fall.

My cravings are SO bad. I'm sure you can all identify with it. A real good visual is the orange fuzzy monster that Weight Watchers came out with a couple of years ago to represent the "cravings monster" who stalks us and follows us wherever we go. I can say I've never physically seen that monster in my path, but I have definitely felt him emotionally and mentally taunting me and teasing me and making funny faces at me ALL THE TIME. My cravings are such a real and tangible thing.

So back to this book. It's by a lady named Lysa Terkeurst and it's called Made to Crave.

The book is about how God made us to crave, but not necessarily to crave food but more to crave Him. Listen to this verse: "How lovely is your dwelling place, oh Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." (Psalm 84:1-2). It says 'my heart & flesh cry out for God'. If I had to be completely honest with myself, my heart and flesh cry out for cheese fries, juicy burgers, lasagna, cheese & bacon soup, coconut cream pie, bacon & onion mac & cheese, donuts and full fat lattes (though my list of "crying out for" foods, could continue for another paragraph or two, to be truly honest). And I'm afraid that I've let my cravings for food consume my craving for God.

Here's an excerpt from her book that really sums up how I feel right now. She's talking about her endless cycle of waking up each morning and weighing herself just hoping that the scales would be kind to her, but they never were, and so she'd step into the kitchen and each whatever yummy thing she could find for breakfast, and start the cycle of bad choices for another day only to repeat this process every morning. Anyway, here's the excerpt:

And the cycle I've come to hate and feel powerless to stop continues. ... But I did need to make changes. I knew it. Because this wasn't really about the scale or what clothing size I was; it was about this battle that raged in my heart. I thought about, craved, and arranged my life too much around food. So much so, I knew it was something God was challenging me to surrender to His control. Really surrender. Surrender to the point where I'd make radical changes for the sake of my spiritual health perhaps even more than my physical health.

Part of my surrender was asking myself a really raw question.

May I ask you this same raw question? Is it possible we love and rely on food more than we love and rely on God?

That hit me like a ton of bricks.

I am a deeply spiritual person and I rely on my God and my Saviour, Jesus, for every breath I take and everything move I make. How could this be humanly possible that I could love food more than God?

But I think back over the past 4 years, heck, the past 44 years, and I can see where my life has almost always revolved around food. I schedule for it. I anticipate it. I devote serious amounts of time to food every day of my life. You might even say I'm a bit obsessive compulsive about my lovely food. 

So maybe there's something to what she's saying.

Well, that is where I am right now. This is the corner that I've turned. I have no idea what's around the corner, but I know that I need to reexamine myself and my heart and get my priorities and my cravings set straight.

I'm only on chapter 4, but I feel like I'm on chapter one of my weight loss journey. And I feel really good about that. I really feel that if I could knock my cravings, or at least get them under control, I could beat this weight loss thing.

Well, I'll let you know how it goes. I plan on journalling more frequently (I know, you've heard that before). I want to work through this new process a bit more and I'm gonna need your help to get me through it. We'll see where I go from here. I hope it's to a better place and a more sane reality for me. Because I just don't know how much longer I can stay on the path I'm on continuing to not reach goal.

...

P.S. If you're interested in the book, I can post more info about it. Just let me know.

Live for now...

Okay, so I fell off the wagon last night and this morning. Which got me to thinking...

You know how when you fall off the wagon, eat something REALLY horrible which you KNOW is just going to add at least a pound to the scale? Well, after that, we have two choices:

• #1. Get back on the wagon. Like my WW leader always says, quoting the Duchess of York, "You're only one meal away from being back on plan." (Great philosophy.)
• #2. Keep on back sliding. Because after all, this totally wrecked any plans you had of losing weight this week, right? So why not just keep enjoying the splurges until after weigh in. If you're gonna gain, you might as well have fun doing it, right?

Okay, so #2 is the most helpful advice, I know. But these are the thoughts running through my head this morning when I didn't have a thing to eat in the house for breakfast. I had meant to go to the store last night but got waylaid by that enormous indulgence (steak restaurant—need I say more?). I was in too much pain (from completely overeating) to go to the store and get stuff for breakfast.

So there I stood, in the grocery store, 15 minutes before I needed to be at work, staring at the pastry counter. Sure, what I should have done is gone to the cereal isle and picked up a box of instant oatmeal to heat up once I get to work. But did I do that? Nooooo.

I added 3 donuts to my atrocities of last night.

I just couldn't get option #1 to kick in. For the life of me, I couldn't!

Now here I sit, eating my lunch as I'm typing and what am I eating? Hot dog, coleslaw and a bag of lays chips. Nothing healthy about this meal at all. Unless you could consider the coleslaw as a vegetable. Aw, come on, you won't give me that one???

Okay, so what I need to do now is write down option #1 and keep repeating it to myself for the rest of the afternoon. Then eat something healthy and sensible for dinner.

So that's what I'll do.

"I'm only one meal away from being back on plan!"

There, that was a good start, right?

But seriously, wouldn't we all be much better off if we could just keep option #1 in the forefront of our brains? How many times have we said "I'm starting my diet tomorrow" or "I'll start back on my exercise regiment tomorrow morning"? We would all be so much better off—even our nation as a whole—if we'd just start that diet or that exercise plan or adopt that better spending plan, or whatever, now.

Make the option of that next meal or next run or next whatever become a present action rather than a future action. After all, who knows what's going to happen in the future, right? But right now... right now we know what's happening. And we can make a difference right now.

Start right now. Not tomorrow morning and not at the next meal, but now.

I am.

.

With every rise, there comes a fall...

Okay, so I have some good news, or rather some great news, and then I have some bad news, or rather some horrible news.

Good news first.

Weigh in yesterday morning: Drum roll please....

I lose 4 POUNDS!!!

You guys were right. Those stress pounds came right off. Man, I'm so happy. I was so afraid those 4.8 pounds I gained week before last was going to take me weeks or even months to get off. I mean, I've only lost 8.6 pounds since the beginning of the year so at that rate, it'd take me over 2 months to take it back off. So I'm so ecstatic!!!

Or, at least I was.

Now for the bad news.

It's bad.

It's really bad.

I had an absolutely HORRIBLE weekend, food-wise.

I think I've gained those 4 pounds back. Why oh why do I do this!!!??? Can you hear me screaming right now? I haven't weight myself yet, but I will tomorrow morning. And I'm not looking forward to it.

I don't know why I did this. Why do I always do this?!

I ate the whole box of donuts Saturday morning just after weigh in. Well, almost the whole box. It was minus a half a donut from when I had my mini, controlled splurge Friday at lunch.

I had lasagna last night for dinner.

I had a piece of coconut cream pie for lunch today.

And the cherry on top of my pigging out weekend was the bag of Cheetos I scoffed down about an hour ago.

My stomach feels horrible. I feel so queasy. I've felt this way all weekend. I don't know what to do. I don't even know who I am any more. I mean, who in their right mind does this to themselves—intentionally. Am I doomed to sabotage my weight loss efforts for the rest of my life? Is this cycle ever going to end?

Kathy (my weigh in lady from WW) told me not to look at my weigh in book this week so I wouldn't wee those lost 4 pounds so that I wouldn't sabotage myself again. But I guess I didn't need to see the numbers in the book, I went ahead and sabotaged myself anyways.

It's almost like every time I lose big it gives me permission to splurge in a big way. It's like I have this leeway or something. It's like, 'whew, I lost that huge amount of weight, now I can just take it easy and indulge for a while because I have a huge buffer to fall back on'. Who does that?

I don't know where to go from here. Will I ever stop this cycle? I've been doing it fairly consistently for over 2 years now. You'd think I would have stopped by now.

So this week is going to be exercise hell for me. I didn't get to go biking this morning, but every night this week I'm going to have to burn a lot of calories. Heck, I might even get up early each morning and do a Shred workout (if I can drag my lazy butt out of bed each morning).

You know... I was only 1.2 pounds away from a paper clip??

I suck!

I thoroughly suck!!

Ode to a donut...

So I guess you could say that I have a thing for donuts. I never really realized it before, but since I started WW 2 years ago, donuts seem to be my passion and my treat.

They catch my eye when I'm minding my own business walking through the grocery store. They haunt me as I pass by their luscious looking buildings on my way to anywhere (there's a donut shop just a few blocks from my house). They were right on my way home from running my 5K AND my 10K. They are everywhere. They're on the way to the beach. They're everywhere!

And for me, donuts are a close second to cupcakes. I swear, one day I'm opening a cupcake store that sells donuts as side items. Seriously! Cupcakes and donuts... what else could a girl want?

So when hubby came home with those scrumptious things yesterday, my appetite was whet.

I figured out they're 6 points a piece. Now, mind you, that's almost one-third of my daily points. But I was definitely considering it. Then I thought, why not just have a half. That's only 3 points and that's totally doable.

So I decided that's what I'd do. I'd have a half a donut with my oatmeal in the morning.

The only thing is, I forgot about it. Can you believe that?? I actually forgot about my precious donut at breakfast this morning!

I finally found a benefit to having a horrible memory.

But the worst thing is that when I came home for lunch, the donuts were still on the counter. Aaaaaahhhhh!!!!!!! Hubby forgot to take them to work!!!!

So, of course I had to eat my 3-point-half-of-a-donut with my turkey wrap. Right? I mean, come one! It was sitting on the counter patiently waiting for me. I can't deny a friend as patient as that now can I??

But I have to take this as a victory. I did, after all, only eat half of the donut.

Mind over donut!

Weigh in is in the morning. I've done so good this week. I'm hoping all of those 4.8 pounds will come off on the scale tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Look what I found...


Mmmmmmmm!