Monday, June 12, 2006

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!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

But there will be less to love. :-(

Charity Grace said...

You made me LOL...you are so bad! Hahahaha... :)

Windy said...

First, Too sweet Stephanies Dear husband!!!

Isn’t it amazing to find out how much water we actually consume. I bought water bottles that have the ozs. on them and we keep them in the frig to grab and drink. At the end of every evening we pull them out to see how much we drank and still need to drink and refill them for the next day. It is so important, especially here in AZ. Did you know that hunger pains are sometimes confused by the need of hydration. So when you are hungry, drink a glass of water and see if your hunger doesn’t go away. Easier said than done!!  At least I am teaching Hannah now and maybe she won’t have the issues I have had.

I have to tell you… I checked out the link to Barbara Curtis’ blog and can I say WOW!!  I loved how she referred to Michelangelo’s statue of David and how she likes to think of herself as “as that block of marble under God's vision and plan”. It is so true!!! I will be cheering her on and continuing with my efforts here at home, one day at a time! 

Thank you for sharing Stephanie!

Charity Grace said...

Windy, I hope my kids won't have the struggles I do either. I want to "fix" them now so that they see me modeling healthful behaviors...They "catch" more than they learn, ya know?

Barbara Curtis wows me too!