False Guilt (or every day has enough guilt of it's own)

matthew 6:34 says Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own...

I've struggled with this, worrying. I am a mom after all and that is what we do best. I try to "let go and let God" with varying degrees of success, but this week I've been having another issue and I want to paraphrase the word a little by saying "each day has enough guilt of it's own"  - I mean, seriously. If there is one thing we do almost as well as worrying, it is guilt. That feeling that we are never doing enough, well enough, or often enough to be what we should be. 

So if feeling guilty for something I really can't help is bad, how about this; now I'm feeling guilty for something I'm not even guilty of! It's the food. It's the yummy, glorious, abundant food I am eating on this new lifestyle plan of Shibboleth. Specifically the french toast.

Oh, let me tell you the glory that is this french toast. 

sweet, subtle, a little crisp on the outside, oh so creamy on the inside...a dollop of whipped cream on top, sprinkled with cinammon.. i can taste a hint of vanilla as I savor each bite. Oh goodness, As my favorite Christian comedian Tim Hawkins once said " Its like eating a baby angel!" 

But here's the thing.Even though I am aware that this is a lifestyle plan, and not a "diet", my body and mind has been conditioned to think over the years of any kind of restricted eating as a "diet". Therefore my mind is saying "I'm going to go without. I'm going to be deprived, and what's more, everything is going to taste bad". Along with that comes the other conditioned beliefs "If it tastes good, especially if it's sweet, I'm cheating and i'm going to go straight to diet hell, and gain fifty pounds on my way down". 

So,, back to the french toast.... Let me tell you what it's made of... two slices of Natures own double fiber wheat bread. On my new planet Shibboleth, inexcplicably, that bread is counted as a fibrous carb along with most VEGETABLES. Yes, my bread counts kind of like a vegetable. I know. It's like a wonderful parellel universe where bread is not EVIL, as long as it's the right kind. Okay, so moving on. Egg whites.1/2 cup. No problem. A splash of vanilla in the egg whites, Bread coated both sides and cooked in a frypan with a little PAM for a minute or two on each side. a sprinkle of cinammon.1/4 cup of sugar free syrup. I thought this would be a miniscule amount, but it is actually plenty for each bite to have syrup and leaves some on my plate at the end. This AMAZED me, because I am the girl at IHOP that adds more syrup several times as she eats her buttermilk pancakes. One thing I have realized is that 1/4 cup and 1/2 cup is actually more than you think it is! Of course, to just make it that much more awesome, fat free reddi whip that I can dollop on top in pretty little puffy clouds to make me feel like I'm being spoiled. According to the rules of planet Shibboleth, this is completely approved, right down to the whipped topping! 

My diet brain can not comprehend this. It keeps saying "girl, you craycray.This is NOT diet food, and you will NOT lose weight eating anything this sweet, creamy and delicious". Well, is 8 pounds in 5 days not losing weight? My brain doesn't care. It says " This is a fluke, you eat this again and it's all over" As you can see, my brain is very talkative, and it usually doesn't say anything at all encouraging or helpful, so I have to put it in it's place a lot.. As I was cooking this particular dish again for the third time in 7 days I was having a nice little conversation with my brain. it went something like this....

Brain: oh oh, here she goes again, Little sugar addict. She's gonna ruin this plan before she even starts it.

Me: Brain, I would like to point out that this dish is made entirely of approved items, and are combined in appropriate and approved combinations. 

Brain: But it's SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good. You know if something seems to good to be true, it always is.

Me: well, maybe not always. 

Brain: SMELL that.... mmmmmm. it smells heavenly! Smells SINFULLY good. 

Me: this food is not a sin, it's a blessing..... 

Brain: I'll believe it when I see it..

Me: well okay then.... I'll show you on the scale buster! 

Brain: oh, she's getting scrappy! 

Me: Shut up! I'm gonna eat. 

Brain: Enjoy that fattening sweet goodness! 

Me: grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. 

So you can see why i might sometimes struggle with this new lifestyle. I'm expecting it to be a DIEt. It's not. I'm expecting to be bored with my food. I'm not. I'm expecting to feel deprived. I'm not. I'm expecting to be hungry. I'm not. I'm expecting to be miserable. I'm not. I'm actually having fun. This is definately a first, but I'm finding learning to live on planet Shibboleth to be a fun journey. One I'm walking on with fun friends. I'm excited to see what tomorrow will bring, and I'm excited to see how this can work for me...So shut up brain. I do not WANT to feel guilty every time I eat this french toast, because there is nothing wrong with it at all! Right now my scripture of the day, every day is this much needed one as I try to purge years and years of dieting failure and dieting mindset from my life "do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind"... my mind doesn't like being renewed. it fights tooth and nail and is very stubborn, but I believe that it can be done, and I continue to work on it every single.day. And now.... for your viewing enjoyment... a little bit of french toast heaven on earth. Enjoy! there's no reason not to! 

Shame on me (or, get under my heel where you belong you devil!)

It's been a long time. Part of what held me back was stress and time, but the biggest thing that has held me back is shame. I've felt incredible shame. One of the things you risk when sharing your journey of life with others is the risk of public humiliation and failure. The risk of falling flat on your face infront of friends, family and strangers. For those of you who have been with me on this journey for a while, you will know that I very publicly went on a several months long diet and weight loss kick that resulted in me losing a good amount of weight and getting to just under 200 pounds. Then I kind of dropped off the planet. Well, that's because I fell on my face.

I found myself faced with a very stressful year, with a teen daughter I couldn't stop worrying about and inlaws falling very ill and requiring my time and energy (as long as a ton of my husband's time and energy), my Asperger's sweetheart boy about to start middle school woefully unprepared, and feeling all around like a horrible mom and a horrible wife and a horrible person in general. My comfort, as is my decades long habit, was food. I should have turned to Jesus, my husband, my friends, but I didn't. I turned to food, my old friend.

Soon I had regained the weight I lost, plus some. When I hit 250 pounds, my previous highest weight, I remembered when I had sworn I would never weigh more than that in my life. When I hit 260, I just cried. I was out of control and couldn't seem to do anything about it. My humiliation and my shame was crushing, but the thought of all the very hard work I did to lose some of the weight in the first place was overwhelming. I had exercised a lot and had to eat PERFECTLY to lose weight. It seems I couldn't have a treat once in a while without sabotaging the whole thing. The stress of having to be perfect in my eating, never being able to have a treat, and having to exercise so much just to slowly lose weight some weeks, and to gain some weeks despite my best efforts was very hard when I was in a great mindset. In this very stressful time of my life I frankly did not have the energy to even think about how to eat right, and when I thought of doing what I had done previously I just broke down crying. I couldn't face putting in all that work again and failing yet again. So I did nothing.

Well, that's not true. I did do some things. I stopped looking in the mirror unless I had to, because I hated what I saw there. I did start eating whatever I wanted, because what joy was there other than the pleasure of food? I did start sitting through most of worship at church because my back would give out on me trying to carry my massive stomach around. I did start breathing heavy after walking up stairs. I did start taking my asthma inhaler multiple times a day. I did make trips to walmart to buy ever bigger sizes of inexpensive shirts and leggings..... yeah, so I did do things, just nothing productive.

When I wasn't taking care of my family, much of my day was spent hating what I had become, so when my ever loving husband who has always been super supportive and who I know in my heart loves me no matter what my size is, started mentioning that we had to start losing weight,and told me I was starting to "waddle" and that I looked like "a swollen tic", I hit rock bottom. He wasn't meaning to hurt me, but his strength has never ever been tact. He wants me healthy and strong and to live long. He doesn't need me to be supermodel skinny. He just wants me healthy. I am thankful I have him, but when he said I looked like a "swollen tic" I was absolutely devastated. It wasn't something I didn't already know, but hearing it out of the mouth of the man who loves me unconditionally was absolutely earth shattering. I had never felt so hideous and unlovable.

I knew I had to do something, but I didn't know what I could do different this time. I didn't want to go back to the same thing that had been so hard the last time, but I certainly didn't want some crash diet that would just perpetuate the cycle I've been on for 30 years now.  I had been watching a couple of my friends at church lose weight the last year or so, especially my one friend Nancy, who lost an incredible amount of weight in what seemed like no time at all. These friends talked of this new lifestyle program they were living and they all had one thing in common. They had a placid and peaceful expression on their faces. They looked calm and happy. When I asked about the program they would tell me snippets, but to my mind it sounded very complicated and despite their protestations that you caught on very quickly, it just seemed too overwhelming to consider. I saw it as another diet I would fail at. I was too scared to try something new, because I didn't have it in me to consider failing again, and there is nothing in my past to indicate long term success in weight loss was even a possibility for me.

Then last week my friend Deborah, who looks incredible by the way, set up a presentation by one of the leaders in this program. I decided to go and at least listen. For two hours I listened to a man named Tony Quinn talk about how this program had saved his life. I was bawling at many parts of it, because his story sounded like mine in many ways. The truths he spoke were truths from my life and from my pain. When I wasn't crying I was laughing, because he was so flippin' funny, but in the end I decided that maybe God was leading me to this program and that I should give it a try. At half off (I got a code from Tony) it was only 74$ for a whole year. That's incredibly inexpensive when you consider I spend more than that for only two months of weight watchers. Unfortunately, I didn't have 74$ and didn't see myself having it anytime soon. I emailed Tony and told him I desperately wanted to start this program and had taxes coming back in a month and could he please find me a sponsor until then. (He had mentioned sponsors being available). He wrote back and said if I would bring a willing mind and heart he would sponsor me himself. He signed me up the next morning, which was a saturday.

I spent all saturday listening to videos and reading and trying to figure out what I could eat. I spent sunday going to three grocery stores trying to find the foods I needed. I was almost ready to quit before I started. It seemed incredibly complicated, and I was worried I would never get it. Next thing I knew, I was signed up for the facebook group, and that is when it turned around for me. There were a ton of people, all happily living this program, who were more than happy to help me through my confusion. I know now that if I have a question, no matter how stupid or silly, there will be 50 people ready and willing to give me an answer at the drop of a hat. I have never met a more welcoming, positive, and helpful group of people.

I am on day three of the program. I have watched about twenty videos, all about 5 minutes in length. I have watched a couple of long videos, about an hour in length. I have taken a lot of notes. I have asked a lot of questions. If this were a diet I would be throwing my hands up in defeat and saying "this, this is NOT worth it", but it is so much more than that. This is a different PLANET. This program is a Christian ministry, and it is run like one. These people are THERE for you. You are celebrated for being a beautiful creation of a loving God.  Yes, even at 260 pounds. Travis Martin, the one who conceived and birthed the program, is enthusiastic, funny, real, and flawed, just like me. The people who work with him are the same way. This is not a slick packaged diet program. This is people trying hard to help people stop killing themselves with food. Sometimes that lack of polish is frustrating. Travis will be holding up a product in a video and all of it but the very top of the package is off camera! I'm like, move it up, move it up! I can't see! However, to me, something about the lack of polish is comforting. I feel like I fit in. I don't feel that way very often.

The other aspect of the program that is wonderful to me, is that Travis says we can't do this without the Lord God! He recognizes that on HIM we depend for success in anything. He recognizes it is about transforming our minds as much as our bodies; that it is about what we feed our minds as well as what we feed our bodies. The more I learn about the program, the more I feel assured in my heart that this is what I've been looking for all along.

Why blog about it now, after three days? Why risk myself again in this public arena? Why not wait until I've had incredible success and then blog? Well, one reason is that I'm excited about it! Another reason is that I'm a writer at heart. Not writing, not putting my feelings down on paper, has in a way kept my emotions chained up inside me.... as my friend Julie puts it, "you HAVE to write, or you have shackles on". The most important reason though, is that after only a couple of days listening to Travis Martin I've realized that the shame is just a tool the devil uses to hold me back and squash me down. I'm a human being on a journey. All human beings fail. My failures happen to manifest in a fat body. Some failures manifest in symptoms you can't see on the outside, but everybody has failures. Everybody has secret shame, but keeping it a secret will eat you alive. I'm not going to be ashamed of trying and failing. The only shame I should really feel is if I never try at all, or if I give up entirely!  I lost sight of that under the accusations of the devil this past year. Well, I'm done listening to you Satan! You can just go to Hell, where you belong. I'm listening to new, positive voices now, and they will help me remember to keep you in your place.

So my journey continues. This time its about more than shedding the weight. It is about shedding all the chains holding me back, mental, spiritual and physical. Step one is writing again. So here I am. read me if you want. What's important is that I'm here.

Oh, and what is this program you may ask... ??? It's called Shibboleth, but Shhhhh....it's a secret.