I look at the pictures and I can see a few small things. I can see that my second chin is much smaller, that the dip where my waist should be is more pronounced, but the things I can't see in the picture are the things that really make a difference. I fit in REAL jeans, not old lady fat jeans. Jeans I haven't been able to wear for 3 years or so. My legs are hard and muscular. My butt is more muscle than jiggle now. My stomach is smaller. My strength and balance have increased tenfold. My endurance is greater. I've seen and felt a lot of benefits from following this path I'm on. This is the difference a few months and 33 pounds makes.
I would love to say it's been easy, and that I'm feeling pumped up and ready to tackle the last 67 pounds with gusto and grace, but I wouldn't be telling the entire truth. The last four weeks I've been struggling mightily. First, my two babies were gone to California with their dad. Divorce just sucks, and the worst thing about it is having to let your babies go far away with someone you don't particularly like or trust and his family that you like and trust even less. It just never gets easier when they are gone, because I never feel 100 percent confident that they are safe. Don't get me wrong. I know they are taken care of physically, but emotionally and spiritually I don't feel confident of their safety, and that is just hard on me. I try hard to leave it in God's hands, but inevitably I fall into a depression during the two or three weeks of the summer they are gone. I just had a lot of trouble being motivated to do what I had to do, and the emotional eating I try so hard to deal with comes back full force. With that emotional baggage comes fatigue and malaise. I just don't want to DO anything. I don't want to GO anywhere. So going to the gym was hard, eating right was hard, and I gained a week, lost a week, gained a week, lost a week, for the last month. That slow progress served to get me down even more, especially because I don't want to let myself or my trainer down during this biggest loser challenge at my gym. The prize is a free year of dues at the gym! That's awesome. that will save me almost 150 dollars in the coming year. I want to win!! When I gain I feel like I'm letting us both down.
Then there is the FITBIT. After joining a free online site called MY FITNESS PAL, which I highly recommend by the way, I purchased something called a FITBIT. This is a fitbit. I have the pink one.
This handy and tiny little device clips on to your waistband, or in my case, my bra. I pop it on in the morning and it tracks all the steps I take, all the miles I walk, and all the floors of stairs I climb. It syncs up with the information I put in My Fitness Pal and Voila, I have a great picture of all the activity I do each day. I was super excited to get this, and I wear it every day. It is absolutely fabulous. It also, when worn to bed on a wrist strap, will tell you how well you slept! Seriously. It's awesome.
I hate it.
I was feeling so good about all the positive healthy changes I've been making in my life. The fitbit neatly and succinctly tells me that I suck. That I'm essentially a slug, and that even though I go to the gym almost every day, I barely move the rest of the time. It tells me I have to totally step it up, and right now I feel about stepped up to my limit. The idea of having to constantly be exercising for the rest of my life just to keep up to the minimum healthy goals is highly depressing and demotivating. It almost makes me want to give up.
Except it doesn't.
Because it makes me mad.
I feel in turns despairing (how can I up my activity level by that much every day???),angry (why in hell does this have to be SO hard?) ,fatalistic (why do I even try, I should just give up!) and hopeful (It's little things... maybe I can find ways to do this). It has done what I had hoped it would do when I bought it - it gives me a real picture of how much I move. I just expected that real picture to be better than it is. So now here I am.
I think about my life. The fact is, I spend a lot of time in front of the computer by necessity. I do the budget, and this takes hours for me. I do the bills, and I am currently trying to register Elizabeth for online public school, get Jackson registered for school after a year of homeschooling, and dealing with a lot of medical paperwork for Jackson. This means some days I am sitting there, copying, filling out, scanning, sending, I spend a lot of time driving Jackson back and forth to therapy. I spend a lot of time driving the kids to school when it isn't summer. It just seems my schedule demands a lot of sitting. So the question is, how do I up those steps each day? how do I get 5000 to 10000 steps every day instead of 2500? I do my cardio at the gym, and those days help a lot. Last week I took the kids to the park and did the loop of the walking trail. That helped. I can't do that every day though. Especially not this week when it's 105 degrees out! I can't spend two hours in the gym every day. My schedule just doesn't allow it, and I don't WANT to spend that long in the gym either. I want to have a lifestyle I can maintain long term, and I just know I can't do that long term. So I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out, what can I do every day? I'm trying to think of little things.
1. parking at the far end of the parking lot when I'm on errands.
2. getting my own drink out of the fridge instead of asking the kids to get me one (hey, 20 steps there and 20 steps back... that's 40 extra steps)
3. doing household chores the hard way. make it into more trips, take things one by one.
4. take groceries in two bags at a time, instead of holding as many bags as I can. All those trips back and forth to the car could add a lot of steps.
5. quickly run up and down the church steps a couple of times when I go to church. I go twice a week, and it's the only place I can think of that I encounter stairs since I live in a ranch house. That will give me a couple of flights of stairs and 50 more steps.
I don't know how much these things will add up, but I'm going to give it a try. If you can think of anything else I can work into my normal life please comment! I want my fitbit to become a friend that gives me good news!
So, the bottom line. I'm proud of how far I've come. I'm depressed that the pictures look essentially the same. I'm happy that I'm a third of the way to my goal. I'm depressed that my daily activity is so much less than I felt it was. I'm proud that I refuse to give up. I'm depressed that I'm feeling depressed about where I am. I don't like being in a slump. My mental attitude is everything! If that is not where it belongs, I struggle so hard. I need to write this on my bathroom mirror:
let us fling aside every encumbrance and the sin that so readily entangles our feet. And let us run with patient endurance the race that lies before us, (Hebrews 12:1)
I need patient endurance to keep at this journey of life and health and faith. I need to remember that I can do nothing without the Lord, and that this isn't about me, but about Him.
And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, and let it be through Him that you give thanks to God the Father.(Col 3:17)
I told myself that I would finish this journey for the Glory of the Lord, and if I lose that focus all is lost. I give it all to you Lord - my attitude, my motivation, my food choices, my exercise, my thought life, and as always, my heart.
Let me run the race to the end, and make you proud.
