Healthful Changes

Barbara Curtis of Mommylife fame has great encouragement and exhortation on weight loss today. She's over halfway to her goal of losing 100 pounds, and her great attitude is an inspiration. One of her encouragements is not to put weight loss off, even if you only need to lose 10 or 15 pounds. In another post she said something along the lines of, I wish I had lost it when I only had 10 pounds to lose.

Well, I have a few pounds hanging around from Sarah's birth. If I lost 10 pounds I'd be happy; if I lost 15 pounds I'd be ecstatic. I struggled with my weight all through my teen years, going from chubby to downright fat, losing a bunch of weight and then gaining it back in a matter of weeks. Since weight loss has always been hard for me, I blamed it on a "slow metabolism" but discovered when I met Billy that it was mainly an unhealthy attitude toward food and an inactive lifestyle. The year between our meeting and marriage I lost 20 pounds without dieting because I was busy and food wasn't so important any more. I worked out like a crazy woman when I was pregnant with Elizabeth and had no residual weight gain; after Silas, I lost it within a few months...Breastfeeding requires a lot of energy! This time it's been more stubborn, probably due to thyroid issues.

I had already begun some good changes, but Barbara's words today spurred me on. I'm not a big fan of dieting (although I realize that in some cases a diet is needed to jump-start one's weight loss). I'm just trying to regain some of the good habits that I let slip away over the last few years so that the extra weight will go away and stay away. Weight loss is still harder for me than for some other people, but I know it's not impossible. Here are a few of those good habits:

Walk daily. This has been easy this week because we walk to the kids' swimming lessons. I plan to keep up the walking even after lessons are over.

Drink at least 2 quarts of water daily. I didn't realize how little water I was drinking till I started measuring it. I was taking in only between a pint and a quart each day. And it's hot here! No wonder I felt bad.

Make at least 50% of my diet raw fruits and veggies. This is more of a challenge, and I really fell down over the weekend. But this is the best time of year to start that habit.

Eat only when I'm hungry; eat only till I'm full. Once I truly reached a place in my life where I ate for energy and didn't care about food. In recent times I've slipped back into that "food is my god" mentality. Bottom line, I haven't been appropriating the self-control I have as God's child. It's mine, I just have to take it.

So if you've been tossing around the idea of making healthful changes, run over and check out Barbara's thoughts. I hope you'll be as encouraged as I am!