May 3, 2010

A not-so-new frontier

Last Thursday, I decided to procrastinate no longer. I am going to lose weight. John is five years old, which means that what I am carrying can no longer be called "baby fat". It is all my very own fat, the result of too much overindulgence and too little exercise. I have been wanting to lose weight for years, but not really motivated to really make the sacrifices needed to accomplish my goal. Instead, I was really hoping/praying for God to do a miraculous liposuction/stomach stapling/heart transplant type procedure one night as I slept so that I woke up the next day forty pounds lighter with tight muscles and with no desire to overeat or eat anything sweet. For some reason, He didn't grant that prayer request. Go figure! What, do you ask, could have instigated such a decision NOW?

I would like to say that, one day, as I was praying, God gave me the fourth greatest commission--to unload myself of the unnecessary burden of obesity (yes, I qualify.) Alas, no such commission came. However, there have been many pin-pricks of conscience. My mother has lost a considerable amount of weight over the last several months using Weight Watchers. So there is some competitive motivation. I lost 50 pounds in the year and a half that I dated and married Eric so I know it CAN be done. When we bought the Wii system a few months back, one of the programs that I insisted we purchase was "My Personal Fitness Trainer" to help with the exercise part of weight loss when I decided to actually try to lose weight. However, it just sat in the package for a bit. What REALLY motivated me was that my husband won a pedometer with a cool program and gave it to me as an encouragement to lose weight because I had been grousing about it over the last several months. The program allows you to log the foods you eat to calculate calories consumed and any activites I am doing. It even tracks my sleeping pattern to see how efficiently I sleep. The food and activity logs are fairly easy to use and I can more effectively see how many calories that I have consumed and burned rather than just "guessing", which has been my previous, unsuccessful method. There are really cool graphs that appeal to my inner geek.

So I have set a goal of 40 pounds in 40 weeks, which is not only achievable, but also uses one of God's favorite numbers, which means my work is extra blessed :-). My secret desire is to be 20 pounds lighter by the middle of June, in which I attend my first wedding. However, slow and steady tends to result in more permanent weight loss. I will achieve it the old fashioned way, by reducing my caloric intake to somewhere around 1500 calories and increasing my activity to burn more calories. This will also help me to become healthier, maybe be able to catch my oldest child in tag, and reduce stress on my knees and hips, which are starting to feel the extra weight. Once I lose the weight, then I might be motivated to pursue other fitness goals, like running a half marathon and surviving a cute, little triathalon. My biggest hurdle is being able to sustain the program more than two weeks, which is when I have typically given up in the past. In the spirit of "Julie & Julia", I will post my accomplishments on Thursdays, which is the day last week in which I made up my mind to start the program, after receiving the pedometer.

For those of you who pray, please pray that God will fill me with all that I need to go through the suffering of sweets withdrawal, since that is pretty much the only way I can stay at 1500 calories and that I would not insist that my family join me in my suffering :-) by being a grump. I would really like to go through this being thankful to God for the food I CAN eat and the quantities that He allows.

3 comments:

Jane Hoppe said...

Oh no, does this mean my fat is really all my own fat? (Having never had children, of course, I have no excuse.) You're inspiring me, Kris. I would like to lose 10 pounds, but it's been so much harder to lose than the almost 30 pounds I once lost. I don't like to admit I indulge myself in sweets, but I do. Bravo for being honest with yourself and setting a realistic goal and going public. I'm rooting for you!

Jane Hoppe said...

A couple afterthoughts, Kris. One is my January 2009 blog post entitled Tricks of the Tradeoffs. Maybe you'll find something in it helpful? Here's the link:
http://aquajane-musings.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-02-02T22%3A18%3A00-06%3A00&max-results=7
Also, one year I gave up chocolate for Lent and lost 9 pounds. That tells me something, doesn't it?

Anonymous said...

Go Kris! You can do it. Slow and steady is the key.