I'M GONNA WASH THAT GREY RIGHT OUT OF MY HAIR...

I got my haircut last Friday. I also had it colored to match what it was 20 years ago…(HINT)…Quite a bit darker brown! To call my natural color light brown is to deny the fact that I am largely grey, with a few recalcitrant wisps of what might be considered light brown.

I now know what women who have a large chest go thru when they complain that men do not look into their eyes.


At church on Sunday, no one immediately looked into my eyes; they were looking at my hair! The looks on their faces were spectacular! I’m comfortable enough in my own skin that it really wasn’t all that big of a deal.

I kidded with a couple of people and told them that I had been eating such nutritious food for six months that I woke up one day last week and my grey hair had recolored itself!!

Mid-life crisis? Probably. But no gold chains around my neck with my shirt unbuttoned too far down………..yet!

I have spent years not looking into mirrors or pictures of myself. I pretty much knew the train wreck waiting to look back at me…I didn’t want to be reminded.

Since I’ve lost a bit of weight, my courage has been bolstered to look at recent pictures. Yes, I have a way to go, but in comparison at least I don’t look like walking death anymore.

I did look awfully grey haired though. I thought that it made me look older; much older than I’ve been feeling since I’ve begun clawing my way back to health. I feel younger anyway.

I guess I wanted my hair to reflect my younger sense of myself.












Weird isn’t it? For years I looked like hell and it didn’t motivate me enough to change. Now that I’ve started to change, I care what I look like! Go figure!


Now I look in the mirror and see the darker hair and it’s pretty startling. It sort of reminds me of someone trying too hard to look younger than he is.

I think this color makes me look too young,
 what do you think?

I’ll be 51 this month, which doesn’t seem real old, certainly 51 seems MUCH younger than it did 20 years ago! Ah, what’s a lad supposed to do?

I suppose I’ll probably go back to somewhere closer to my natural grey hair color, after all I earned every one of ‘em!

THE NEW NORMAL

Friend wife and I have been working out at the gym now for about a month. We don’t set records by any means, but we are making progress.

Wanna feel my muskels?? :-)

Our gym has a contest running to attempt to exercise in miles what the recent *R.A.G.B.R.A.I. event did in miles across the state of Iowa. In two weeks my wife has either walked on the tread mill or used the elliptical to go over 20 miles and I’m just behind her with 19.75 miles!

Feeling better is one of the MAJOR benefits of losing weight and exercising. I didn't know how bad I felt till I started feeling better!


…when I stop and think about how IMPOSSIBLE setting a pace of 3.5 MPH on the elliptical for an hour used to be, and how it’s “normal” now, it blows my mind!


That I could do any activity without stopping for an hour… (Ahem…besides eating)…has been nothing that I could ever imagine before.

I didn’t dare to dream that big!


My wife and I are total opposites on so many things, yet this is something we get to do together! We take walks and talk about stuff…. we’re (re)connecting and we talk far more now than when we would sit silently across the table from one another at a restaurant eating, which used to be “normal”.


Small bites add up! My morbid obesity can attest to that.


The flipside, however, works too!


“Small bites” in the area of small decisions to eat lower calorie choices, exercise an extra 5 minutes, call a friend or mentor to get refocused, use self talk and encourage yourself that you can stick to this plan, that you’re not really that hungry, going and looking in the closet and finding the clothes that are too big now can keep you going….and the results can be stunningly BIG!


Dear reader, I am not the exception; this is nothing new…you can do it, I can do it!


[By the way, I need to hear it as much (OR MORE) than anyone!!!!!]


Can I love myself enough to make the choices necessary to feel better?

Can you?


What would I pay for a new lease on life?

How much would you pay?


What are you paying now by being overweight and unhealthy?
I had sometimes resorted to walking with a cane to ease the joint pain!!


There is a whole new world out there that I either didn’t care about or my mind was so sluggish with too much food I didn’t recognize its existence!

 Losing hope is a terrible thing!

Finding something that I didn’t even know was missing is “SHAZAAM” time!


So yes, it’s tempting to skip the hour at the gym 5-6 nights a week. I always feel better afterwards though.


ALWAYS!


I have never been sorry for the time I’ve spent at the gym, and I've never been sorry for the food that I didn't eat!

So I'll continue to work through these heavy thoughts and attempt to let them motivate me to lighter living.

It’s beginning to be the new “normal”.






*(Des Moines) Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.

PARKING IS MUCH EASIER NOW!

It used to be that I would drive around a parking lot a few times to find the space closest to the front door of the establishment I wanted to go to. When I was heavier, it took a lot of effort to move myself from point A to point B. Given the trouble with my joints, and knees in particular, I always searched for the shortest point between my car and “wherever”.

Anytime we were out running erands together, I often would wait in the car for my wife if she thought she’d be less than 15 minutes in the store. It wasn’t worth my slowing her down with the slow crippled shuffle I had developed nor was it worth me suffering joint pain for the shorter shopping trips.


These downward changes in my mobility developed slowly over time. One day it occurred to me as I was sitting inside Barnes & Noble waiting for the rest of my family to finish shopping the whole mall that I hadn’t seen the rest of the mall (except for the food court!) in quite a long time!

The powered scooters at Walmart were beginning to look like a viable option for me!


Now… my wife and I pay to work out at the gym! We park clear across the parking lot from the entrance as that’s where the shade is for our van. It seems foolish that we spend anytime searching for a "close to the entrance spot" anywhere we go.

We want the excersise anyway!

It's really nice getting rid of some heavy thoughts, and even nicer to enjoy my new light living!

YOU'RE SWEATING...YOU OLDIE!

Mercy Weight Loss Center’s program recommends that as you follow their eating guidelines that you also attempt to burn a minimum of 2,000 calories a week with physical activity. They hold you accountable for this by having you write on a whiteboard in front of the class each week, how many calories of physical activity you burned during the previous week. You also write down how much food you have eaten and whether you have followed all the guidelines or not.

You do not write down if you gained or lost and no one needs to know your weight ever, unless you volunteer that information. The leader then checks to see the percentage of compliance for the week for the group as a whole. The goal obviously is 100% compliance. It feels pretty rough when the reason the class didn’t get 100% is because of what you failed to do that week.


Everyone is extremely nice about it, but the pressure, subtle as it is, has it’s affect on most of us. We don’t want to let ourselves or our group down. It seems to work.


When I started back in February the thought of burning any calories in physical activity seemed too much to bear. In fact, the change in my diet was so drastic to my body; I didn’t even attempt “P.A.” until about the third week in. Over a few weeks I gradually worked up to the 2,000 calorie target that they suggest.


Once my body adjusted to the change in diet I was amazed to see how energized I was starting to feel. Never in my life had I eaten so little food and had so much energy! I think it began to really kick in 5 or 6 weeks into this regimen. My exercise consisted of either walking or yard work and they give you a handy little chart to estimate the calories you burn depending on the exercise you do. After about 2 months into this new way of life, I usually had no trouble getting those 2,000 calories burned off.


The main idea is to do more than what you normally were doing physically. In my case, anything besides trips to the kitchen, bathroom and bed would qualify!


So who “loves” to exercise?

Not many people embrace regular physical activity unless they hide the exercise in a game like basketball or golf or fill in the blank. I have some friends who enjoy golfing, and while I can’t believe I’m writing this, I may ask to go play alongside them this fall if we get together. (Last year I was the “official golf cart driver”) as there was no way I was limber enough or strong enough to actually try swinging at a golf ball let alone walking the course.


Things change. They’ve been changing in a good way lately for me.

My wife and I joined a gym. We lift modest weights three times a week and work on the elliptical or treadmill the other three days. That is so totally out of character for me in my adult life it seems surreal!

I can recognize the health benefits already.

They, (whoever “they” are) always tell you that it’s going to have to be a permanent lifestyle change, and intellectually I’ve always agreed. Working out at a gym was so far beyond my ability to dream it hasn’t sunk in yet.

I do feel better. “They” are right.

So, as always, I still struggle with some heavy thoughts, but I try to let them motivate me to embrace light living.

LIVING LIFE TO ITS FULLEST POTENTIAL!

 Jesus came to give us real life, here's an excerpt from scripture:


"I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of."
The full excerpt can be found here...John 10:1-10 (The Message)


"...More and better life than they ever dreamed of." I am dreaming again! Six months ago if you would have told me I'd be burning over 2,000 calories a week at the gym I'd have said "Jim who?!"


I have more energy to do stuff than I have had in years! Just ask my neighbors who have marvelled at the yard work I've done this season! I'm repainting the house, and I'm buying clothes off the rack!!!!!!!

I'm living ....again!!!


Part of real living involves taking care of your spiritual life.


Jesus said He was the Way, the Truth and the Life.

He's been waiting there all the time for me, waiting patiently in line.....behind one heck of a lot of overeating!!


It dishonors my Creator when I treat this gift of life with scorn. Something in your life which shortens your life, such as morbid obesity, cannot be pleasing to God.


The Apostle Paul wrote and said: "Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself..." 1Cor.6:19


So if God owns me, and I don't belong to myself, than stuffing my body with more food than I need to survive is damaging me.


God wants the best life for us. He wants to help me discover why I overate to stuff away the pain, (or whatever gobbledygook I deal with.). He wants me to believe that He does have the power to lift me out of this ditch called "death by smorgasbord."


I've tried to substitute food for God in my life. I've tried to fill the "God-shaped" hole in my soul with food.

There may be enough food in the world to make me feel better, but I can't eat it all!!


If I was as consumed with the "God-Bearing life" as I was with overeating, what sort of christian could I be?

Okay. 

I'm working on losing weight and getting my physical strength back at the gym...CHECK!

I'm writing this blog for myself to sort out my thinking and emotions so that I can be healthy in my mind...CHECK!

I am figuring out how God fits in the "God-shaped hole" in my soul, and attempting to remove food from there to make more room for Him...CHECK!

So that’s what I'm trying to practice.

Note!  Practice is not perfection!

I've started down the path,  but I'm not sure I'll ever "arrive" this side of eternity! ~smile~

For more on this concept, please click on my page: "The Three Legged Stool."


Of course I still deal with some heavy thoughts, but I’m attempting to let those instruct me in the ways of light living. 

Which in my view is living life to its fullest potential!

Benefits of losing weight # 109 & 110

This is a bathroom "Wiping-Aid"

Pushing near 400 lbs. one  realises that you are dealing with such a large stomach that you really have to contort yourself to be able to reach where you need to, to stay sanitary.  Doing so required bending in such a a way that I cut off my air supply temporarily and I had to decide (eventually) each time how out of breath I could be vs. how clean I wanted to be.  It was an exhausting ordeal.  I never felt as "clean" as I wished to be. 

How about that for a daily reminder of the need to lose weight? 

 Don't get me started on not fitting into our shower stall at home and what steps I took to get clean down where I couldn't reach. 

Okay, it's way more information than you needed to know, yet...

this was my life for the past couple of years and I seriously considered buying one of those wipe aids pictured above! 

Now that I am currently down 94 pounds from my record high, I reach everywhere just fine thankyou!  An unsung,(but really significant) milestone in a morbidly obese person's life!

Oh!  Benefit #110??  "Regular size" bathtowels are beginning to have the capacity to dry me off completely after my shower too!!