New Year New Me 2017

You know the title of my blog post today is what every person says at the beginning of the year. We all have a vision for the new year and many people make resolutions that by the 15th of the month are a thing of the past. Well I am not like every one else so I am declaring my new year, new me mantra today! Well not really, I actually began the year with this idea in mind and it has already been a long 15 days. I started the year with a 21 day Daniel Fast that I am in the midst of now as this will be my 3rd week starting today. I have been vlogging over on YouTube as I feel like this is going to be the year that I am going to push through my insecurities and finally get myself to a place of consistently eating healthy and exercising. The idea is to start the year off by consecrating myself to the Lord with the Daniel Fast and then continue to allow the Lord to guide me in my food choices and my exercise routine. I invite you to come over to YouTube and follow my journey.

Losing4Christ Weight Loss Journey 2017

 

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(Day 29) Beginning The Fifth Week of My Journey

Here we are at the beginning of the fifth week of my journey. We are also nearing the end of this blog series and I am please to be able to show a 4.2 pound loss from October 1st. What I see represented by these numbers is that I began a sprint and then plummeted by the beginning of week three but then I really started working on those baby steps. The first two weeks I tried to forge ahead with what I knew worked. Then by the beginning of the third week I really started to let myself be led by the Holy Spirit. It has been a wonderful learning experience for me.

I am learning that truly I am a spiritual being housed in a physical body and there has to be balance between the two. Jesus used natural and physical illustrations to teach spiritual truths. I am learning to have such a beautiful balance in my life that is seasoned with grace because every day is not so balanced. Oh but I feel like I am living out what Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians chapter 2:

“But as it is written:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.” – 1 Corinthians 2:9-12 NKJV

This may be the fifth week of my journey of transforming my temple but I feel like it really is just the beginning. I am so stirred in my heart to see how God is going to continue to not only transform my body but my mind as well. I’m so grateful for you coming along side me in this journey as I walk with Jesus learning to live abundantly and be balanced in mind, body, soul and spirit. ~ 1 Corinthians 6:19 – “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?”

(Day 27) Fitbit Goal Met

Well I did it! I got my 5000 steps in today. I took a nap after work again but I was not going to let one more day pass without working on my exercise commitment. I only have today right? So today is the day to meet my goal. How do I feel about this? I feel great! I think this has motivated me to get back into making sure I am doing this every day. I hope it will give me energy like my accountability partner said because I am just so fatigued every day. It’s frustrating!

So now my next goal is to take my schedule to the Lord in the morning. This is how I am going to have to start every day. I need guidance from the Lord. My ideas are not as successful when I just go forward without including the Lord in my plans. In John 15:5 Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Quite frankly I don’t want to do anything apart from Jesus. He is my everything. My desire is to walk out this journey with Jesus not by myself. I can’t do it alone. I appreciate my accountability partner but we both agree that even with each other we are nothing without Jesus leading the way.

Who is leading your life today?

Thanks for stopping by!

(Day 20) Unexpected Motivation

My small victories that I wrote about stirred a conversation with a friend about how do I celebrate these victories. I had no idea how to celebrate. My thoughts of a celebration revolve around food. When my friend asked me how I was going to celebrate my response was “well it won’t be with desserts because I am not eating sweets for 31 days”. The reality that my view of celebration was only about food really caused me to think. I don’t know how to celebrate with anything other than food. When someone gets a promotion or graduates, we go out to eat. It’s what I know. The only other thing I could think of was sending a card but I am not going to send myself a card. That would just be weird.

I asked for feedback on how to celebrate in the group I am involved in on Facebook and got some great ideas that I had not considered. Buy a shirt, take a bubble bath, give yourself permission to take a nap were among the suggestions I received. As I think back to the times when I have been on this journey before I see where I did not really celebrate my victories. I mainly focused on my failures. I was a completely black or white thinker and I was either succeeding or failing, there was no in between, there was no room for the middle ground of learning opportunities. This revelation became an unexpected motivation for me.

When I think back to the time when I lost the most weight within one year I do remember getting my hair cut and colored which was a celebration of my success. However, when I veered off my path I hit a wall and would beat myself up for days on end before ever getting back up and moving forward. It was a major hindrance to my journey. When I got to the end of that year and only lost 86 pounds instead of 100 pounds I didn’t see the 86 pounds as a success but a failure. I know, it was stinking thinking. After that time of what I viewed as defeat I gave up for a long time. I had a few attempts at getting back on track but I could not give myself grace to move forward. I felt that I had let down God. I was on a journey with Jesus, that was and is my purpose for writing this blog.

I’m so thankful that my thinking is shifting and I am allowing myself grace to keep walking even when I don’t meet every goal. I re-evaluate, I change or modify my goals when I find that I am attempting to do too much at once. I listen to my accountability partner when she gives me feedback if I begin to go on a downward trail. I allow myself to learn along the way and I am not rushing into anything. It’s not about losing weight anymore. It’s about being healthy and honoring God with my body. It took years to get to the place I am today with my weight and it may take years to get to a healthy weight. In the meantime I need to truly learn how to celebrate the victories that I am seeing in my life.

Today I have a boost of motivation that I did not anticipate and it’s wonderful. It’s allowing me to grow. I have a new-found confidence that I haven’t experienced before. I am really making changes to my life and each step of the way I am inviting the Holy Spirit to teach me and guide me. I am excited for the things to come. I am motivated to continue this journey and learn to celebrate my small victories with more than just a blog post. What a blessing! Thank You Jesus!

Thank you for stopping by today.

Just another reminder before you leave, DaySpring.com is celebrating all of the amazing Write 31 Days readers who are supporting nearly 2,000 writers this October! To enter to win a $500 DaySpring shopping spree, just click on this link & follow the giveaway widget instructions. Good luck, and thanks again for reading!

(Day 15) Beginning The Third Week of My Journey

Here we are at the beginning of the third week and I neglected to do my weigh-in yesterday! I was so focused on what the Lord was saying to me about balance and distractions that I didn’t realize that it was time for my weigh-in update yesterday. It happens though. Life happens, we shift our to do lists forward to the next day multiple times and sometimes we never get back to those things. Anyway, I was a little nervous getting that scale out this morning because if you have been following me since the beginning of this month you know that days 8-12 got away from me. I didn’t plan well and the scale actually reflects the fruit of those days. So here we go:

So as you can see I am up 5.2 lbs but I am still down 4.2 lbs from my original weight. Well that just tells me that I need to really put into practice the things I have been talking about over the past three days as I move into week three. I have some goals for the week that I am going to implement to help move toward my main goals.

1. My total daily step count goal is to reach 5000 steps for 6 of the next 7 days.
2. Plan my meals ahead of time and do my best to stick to the plan
3. Grace, grace, grace

In the past I have started this journey with great initial results and then when the results were not optimal I would abandon ship or fall into a heavy binge and well you can see where I’m going with this. This morning I have a different mindset though and during my morning talk with my accountability partner I said this: “We have to stop looking so hard at the goal and begin to enjoy the process.” I ministered to myself there and immediately wrote it down because it really is true. So I am going to enjoy the process of allowing the Lord to guide me every day in working through transforming my temple. I am the temple of the Holy Spirit and unless I am listening to Him tell me how to re-build and transform, well I may as well quit right now. It’s not about me. Grace, grace, grace. Thank You Lord for grace.

Have a great day!