My fat jeans are getting tight.

And my bra is starting to cut into my side.

I am too ashamed to get back on the Wii Fit. How sad is that? I have gained at least 18 lbs. since the last time I got on it, and I cannot BEAR to here the weighted grunt of the little work out buddy, so I keep slipping further and further into "debt" on the scale. And now my "fat jeans" are tight.

I am so exasperated with myself.

I do great every day until I open my mouth and eat for the first time. Then it's like it all goes to heck in a basket... a picnic basket to be specific.

I've been contemplating going back on Atkins. It's like returning to Egypt in my mind, but it is effective. I'm really considering it since I know by this time next week there will be lots of Easter candy to resist. Not as much as in years past and in fact the thought I had of going out to grab a couple more things probably isn't going to happen, because the fact is, I'm not the only chubby at this ranch.

I have also considered a fast. I never recommend a fast for diet purposes, but although I am aware of the effectiveness of fasting on weight loss, I am more focused on the possibility that it could break the power food seems to have over me. But I also know it won't work if it's just my idea and wrongly motivated. I've never fasted successfully without the help of the Holy Spirit. Of course my last successful fast seemed to unleash the flesh fest that led to this huge weight change in the wrong direction.

I have considered the possibility of not putting a single thing in my mouth without praying about it first, but once the food is before me, it seems like the idea fades and I don't actually remember the thought at all.

I'm sitting here now stuffed and miserable from Taco Tuesday and Dollar Scoop Night, and still the thought of hitting the kitchen still plays in my mind. What is wrong with me? Why is my will so weak?

It's getting desperate. I threw all my really fat clothes out last year, and I am bound for the world of sweats soon if I don't get my act together. Summer is coming, and I want to be beach bound and playing at the water park this summer. At this point I'm not even sure my bathing suit would fit, much less if I want to be seen in it. I've got to make a move. I'm 2 lbs above where I was when I started this blog. At least I was this morning, I don't know, it may be worse after today.

I've got to do something. I've got to get moving again. People used to ask me when I was losing all my weight how I did it. "Easy," I'd answer, "eat less and move more." Still seems simple, but I'd no longer describe it as easy. But I've got to get my act together.

Lord, help me!

Struggling

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do;
but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.
Romans 7:14-19

I am sitting here just finishing up watching the Biggest Loser. I'm disheartened. I think I have put back on the entire 5 lbs I had lost. I am just struggling.

I am anticipating already the number of well-intentioned friends who will have just the right answer for me. But the fact is, they don't. This is about so much more than food and exercise- this is a spiritual issue for me. And I am NOT where I need to be. I have been there before, but it's been a long time, and I am having the hardest time figurng out how to get back.

A year ago when I was doing really well physically, working out, being committed, feeling strong and losing weight, it was my top priority. It was great, and it was awful. The great is obvious but the awful is the neglect to my spiritual well-being that was severe a year ago. I wasn't reading my bible, my prayer life was non-existent and I was struggling constantly with all kinds of temptation because of it.

I opened up to one friend a little and am haunted now by the words spoke to her. I said, "I know God and His Word will always be there and sooner or later I will come back around to that, but right now taking care of my body is more important." What a horrible lie I was buying into. I teetered on a very dangerous abyss, more than others even really know.

I am glad that my heart has drawn back to the Lord, and spending time with Him and being in His Word has gained back the proper priority. But the battle with my body is being lost. And I am struggling with understanding the battle of my mind when I am truly making the very best efforts to abide, abide, abide.

The slippery slope of my health and weight loss efforts is NOT directly linked to my change in priorities toward the Lord. I started to fall and fail with my eating and my weight back in the fall, and I didn't right my heart with the Lord till the first of the year. But now I struggle to find the balance, and to somehow get both aspects of my life in order and moving in the right direction.

There is a balance. I just have to find the path to get there. I find myself these last few days waking up and crying out to God to please help the new day be different, and by nightfall I find myself wallowing in regret.

I have to find the way. I have to, not for the size of my clothes, but for the state of my heart- spiritually speaking. I have to find the way.

How to grab hold

41

It means a big lunch at PF Chang's and a dozen cupcakes from Dad. It means yummy treats from a girlfriend and a box of See's Candy in the house. Treats not available, but intended for me.

I have indulged. Every bite has been delightful.

And now comes regret.

The scale has tipped the wrong direction, and shame is settling in.

I am contemplating not eating anything at all tomorrow, just to find empty again.

I haven't felt hunger in days, and I haven't stopped eating.

I am actually contemplating Atkins again. Which is a hard place to be. I know it will be effective, but it feels like a failure, like food wins. It's still stronger than me, and I hate that.

I had a donut in my hand at church this morning and I kow my friend saw it. I felt like she saw me cheating on my husband. Which in a way, she kind of did, spiritual adultery against the Lord.

Sigh.

I'm not turning in my weight today. Just like I won't get back on the Wii because I can bear to hear it's reaction from the last time I worked out a good 20 lbs or so ago, I can't bear to see the failure of the last couple days in writing.

It's the fine line between determination and desperation.

I'll be honest I have a night out with a girlfriend ahead where we celebrate our birthdays together, and I don't want to start Atkins before then because of the dessert I might have to give up if I do. It's a sickness. It's sin.

I don't know what I'm going to do. But I've got to do something.

Today my pastor talked about being an overcomer in Christ. And in this area, I still haven't leared to walk in the victory that is mine. I have yet to figure out how to grab hold of it. But I have to.

Somehow, I have to.

Careful what you pray for

Things at work have been so stressful, and my "job" is too look constantly at the most stressful and disheartening information. "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." says Hebrews 11:1, but when what you look at it constantly is so contrary to what you hope for, it battles against hope and faith.

A lot of mornings I wake up and I think to myself and whisper quietly to the Lord, "I can't do this." And I actually find myself hoping one of the kids will be sick and we'll have to stay home. Nothing serious mind you, just a low grade temp, I just hope for enough to not have to go to work.

Today I had to stay home. It wasn't because someone was sick but because the phone problem and work graduated to an internet problem. So I had to stay at home and get on the internet throughout the day to babysit email for work and transcribe responses which is similar to typing in a language you don't speak.

It was a long hard crappy day and the night is now even 10,000 times worse and I don't even want to type about it anymore. It's all I can do not to say bad words and scream. So, although staying home has sounded appealing for a while. I got to today and it wasn't at all what I had hoped for in fact in sucked. And now sucks even more.

Today's weight: 218.0

Today's battles: Home alone all day with a pantry full of food.

Today's better choice: Can't really say I made any good choices today.

Today's defeat: Too many emotional eating choices.

Today's victory: No good choices = no victory.

Just the facts

Not the best eating day today. My morning started with unexpected stresses and I never got my focus right, not on the Lord and not related to my eating.

It wasn't as bad a day as used to be the norm, but I wasn't intentional or focused. I had a bowl of cereal this morning and for lunch a string cheese and some peanuts and raisins (it was a bag of trail mix but I didn't eat any of the MnMs just all the raisins and a few nuts.)

I didn't snack after work, but I had a few too many chips while I chatted with friends at dinner, made an ok choice with just 2 tacos, but dropped the ball when I had two $1 scoops of ice cream at Baskin Robbins' dollar scoop night. I couldn't choose between flavors and really wanted both. I wanted them, and I willfully chose to overdo. The fact that the biggest part of my day's eating came late in the day also wasn't good, and right now I am sitting here overly full and with a little regret.

I am anticipating the regret will intensify with tomorrow's weigh in. Life is full of 2 steps forward, one step back, today probably falls under the backwards step.


Today's weight: 217.8

Today's battles: Tuesday evenings are centered around social eating.

Today's better choice: Walked to Taco Tuesday, it's about a mile and a half away and we walked very fast today.

Today's defeat: Too many tortilla chips and a second scoop of ce cream.

Today's victory: When it came time to order tacos I really wanted three but I only ordered two. Neal started to order two and then changed his order to three, I was extremely tempted to up my order too, but I resisted. I felt good.

Leaky Life Preserver

For many years now I have struggled with anxiety attacks. Although my food issues preceded the anxiety attacks, the combination of the two brought the food issues to a new level.

My anxiety, interestingly enough, began at the end of a very difficult season. After 3 1/2 years of extreme stress through the very difficult process of my son's nightmare adoption process, when the dust had settled, I began fighting very bad anxiety attacks. My understanding is that after living a long period of time with heightened adrenaline levels, the adrenal gland can begin to misfire and the sense of "fight or flight" it causes manifests itself in the form of anxiety. You want to kick butt or run and you don't really know why, so your mind begins to run through all the reasons you might be feeling the fear, and then you really do become overwhelmed with the negative thoughts and the anxiety escalates.

This morning I woke to heavy anxiety (the morning tends to be when my attacks occur) and since there is actually a lot going on around here that legitimately is frightening and stress-inducing, it wasn't easy to shake. I spent much of my morning feeling very anxious and had a heavy sense of foreboding. For the near seven years that I have been battling this anxiety, I have often been relying on food for my comfort. The habit is firmly established, and old habits are hard to break.

I had my quiet time this morning with the Lord and part of what my holy conversation with the Lord was today you can read here, but the battle was still very heavy for me against my desire to go to food.

Most of the day I did a pretty good job of putting up the fight, meditating on the scriptures and keeping busy at work, but when I got home and was all alone, I made the mistake of not going back to the Word again when the anxiety rose. Instead I went to food. The problem is, grabbing hold of food as a life preserver, is a mistake, because although it may feel like it holds me afloat for a short time, the reality is there's a leak in it, and eventually, I am still going to sink, possibly deeper and further from a safe place than I would have if I hadn't grabbed hold of it in the first place. I needed to go back to the Lord and have another conversation with the Lord and press through.

Although I was truly hungry and eating dinner shouldn't have been a problem, I needed to wait until the emotions and anxiety had leveled so that I could have more easily stopped after satisfying the physical hunger. Instead the two were still too intertwined, and after my stomach was satisfied, I went to dessert to feed the ache and want in my soul.


Today's weight: 218.2

Today's battles: Was an extremely emotional day for me. Going to food for comfort is a long time habit, it was a huge temptation to resist.

Today's better choice: I gave away my half of leftover sandwich to Jake in his lunch today and only ate a small cup of coleslaw for lunch today.

Today's defeat: Despite my great desire for a second bowl of homemade chicken tortilla soup, I resisted (reminding myself I could have more tomorrow) but the stress of the day finally overwhelmed and I hit the sweets after dinner.

Today's victory: Although I blew it in the end this evening, I did get through the whole day at work without giving into the desire to indulge, the only sweet I had at work today was 2 lifesavers.

Diligence

If you knew there was someone stronger than you in your midst who wanted to harm you, you would lock yourself inside your house and not cease to keep watch over the door until you knew the threat had passed. If you really believed there was a danger, you would be diligent and not relent until you knew you were safe. Whether it was that the threat had left or you had armed yourself strong enough for the defense, you would not relax and lost track of the danger until you felt secure.

My flesh is against me. (Newsflash: yours is too.) At the moment my flesh is still stronger. It is interested in self-satisfaction and not best interest. It lives by the mantra "buy now, pay later." It is short-sighted, selfish and only seeking indulgence. That may sound hyper-spiritual to some, but it's true. Willpower will only get you so far, eventually it will subside. There has to be a better solution to be able to overpower the flesh.

There was a discussion today about my leftover cupcake on Facebook. I was advised to toss it out, even to spit on it. I see the short term wisdom in the advice, but my issue is, the cupcake is not my enemy. There will always be cupcakes and treats and to think I will say "no" to them all for the rest of my life is unrealistic. (Especially since it's my birthday week, haha.) I know my real battle is internal, not external. Food needs to be food, and it is ok to eat the things you enjoy, in moderation.

I went on a date night with my hubby tonight. I only ate half my meal! When I got home I cut the leftover cupcake in half and split it with Neal, those were GOOD choices. But then I crossed the line and made food the entertainment again and brought out the See's candy, and then I, in my relaxed manner, took three pieces instead of one.

I lost track of my flesh. I wasn't beng diligent and I let my guard down. Eating the cupcake, half of it even, wasn't the problem. The problem was that food got out of focus and became more than it's supposed to be. I crossed the line with the candy. I took a few steps more past it when I grabbed, one, two, three pieces. I let the flesh go, and now I am sitting here and anticipating great disappointment when I get on the scale tomorrow.

What I am realizing is that I need to be more diligent. I can't relax. And what I am really realizing is I need to be more diligent in seeking God's help in controlling my flesh. I'm not sure that's been the case so far. I do think the Lord has been helping me, but by His grace more than at my request.

This is only day 6, and I am just beginning to muddle through, but I know if the Lord is not the souce of my strength in this battle, I'm never going to win.


Today's weight: 217.8

Today's battles: My sweet tooth kicked in big time tonight.

Today's better choice: I split my leftover cupcake from yesterday with Neal. (And bonus points that I didn't give in to it last night.)

Today's defeat: After the cupcake I went for the See's candy and had 3 pieces. I felt the regret immediately and physically. (I'm anticipating a bad weigh in tomorrow.)

Today's victory: I only ate one mean today because Neal and I had a date night out to dinner, I truly found true hunger. And I brought half of the meal home.