Scale: Slave to? Or Accountable To?

 Weightloss.   Everywhere you turn you see ads for quick and easy weight loss.   Pills, shakes, creams, and even laser therapies.  If you have followed me at all, you know I have struggled with my weight since our daughter got sick the first time.   I know I am repeating myself, but I am a major stress eater.  Knowing and understanding your eating habits and eating triggers is critical to success in weight loss.

Fast forward to this spring.   Gyms had been closed for three plus months.  Our business has been drastically affected by this pandemic as well.  That was a recipe for disaster for me.   Food for comfort, beer and pizza, wine, chips and so much more.   The latest health issue in our home if our son hurting his back over a year ago during off season baseball training.  That is another story, but let's just say, unsupervised weight training with young high school athletes is a REALLY bad idea.  He has struggled a lot and missed a lot of baseball as well.  The masses of tests, emergency room visits and so much more has been stressful to say the least.

We trusted so many people and medical professionals to figure out what was going on with his back.  The answer?   I don't know.  His tests are normal.  We finally turned to a long time friend and person trainer Jason Ivesdal.  Jason is the perennial student and is always studying and learning to better service his clients.   Our son started training with Jason and working on building back his strength and mobility.  Of course then COVID hit.  there was no more training with Jason for over 3 months.  But, this isn't about our son.  I always went along to our son's training sessions with Jason.  Jason and I would chat about a lot of different things during those sessions.

One very emotional day for me, I said to him with tears in my eyes, "I can't be like this anymore, I need your help to lose this weight for good.".   His simple answer, "I will help you."

I will write more about the process later, but right now I want to talk about the scale.   I have been a slave to the scale for many years.   If I had a night of beer and pizza, I would step on the scale the next day.  I would get frustrated that the scale would go up significantly and it would take me days to get back to where I was.  I would get frustrated and say things like, "I won't ever be able to eat normal food again.  Every time I eat normal food I gain weight."  "I'm never going to get to my goal weight."  In the past the scale would make me feel like a failure.  It was not a healthy place for me to be so obsessed with the scale.   

The scale does not always reflect where you are in a weight loss journey.  There are other considerations.  For example:   Are you retaining water?  Do you have food allergies?  Are you working out and building lean muscle mass?   The scale is only one piece of a larger wellness puzzle.

So, I changed my focus.  Now I am excited to step on the scale and don't concern myself with how much it goes down. I am looking at the scale as a tool to help keep me on track.  I am learning what foods and what things make the scale go up slightly.  That way I can adjust my "normal" eating habits to not eat those things as frequently.   I also purchased a new scale.  This one has an app (doesn't everything) associated with it that lets you visually track your progress.  As an accountability tool, I make adjustments if I see the scale go up.  This will help me ultimately from rebounding and gaining the weight back.

My scale was also not accurate.  So many home scales are NOT!  That didn't help my cause.  So I decided to splurge on a new scale.  Withings Body Scale

                     

Who would have ever thought I would be excited about a scale?   This bad boy does all this:

• Tracks BMI & Weight Trends
• Up to 8 Users
• Wi Fi Synchronization
• Daily Weather Report
• Works with Multiple Health Apps
• Has a Baby & Pregnancy Mode (I am way beyond that but great for expectant Mother's!)

The hardest thing for me over the last few years is to remember that I AM Worthy.   This is a struggle for so many women.  I have lost weight and regained it more times than I can count anymore.  I know I have said this before, but it is time for ME.  Time to be healthy.  With all the craziness of this pandemic, it is even more important for people to care for the bodies God gave them.  Eat healthy, exercise, get plenty of sleep and have a strong spiritual life.  That will help you stay healthy even through a pandemic!   I will write more about healthy living, but don't fall for quick weight loss scams.  Pills, shakes, etc.  They are not sustainable unless you want to continue purchasing and using those products for the rest of your life?   No gimmicks, no cheats, real food and exercise (full disclosure, I started with shakes, but there is a good reason for that - I only did them for 21 days). 

You are worth it.   I am worth it.  If you need to talk with someone about this, I am always available.

This post contains affiliate links.  If you purchase a product through an affiliate link I make a small commission at no cost to you.  This small commission keeps my husband happy when I spend too much time on things like this.  Thank you for your support!

Worship Where You Are

Shelter in place.  Churches closed.  No singing.  Social distancing.  I never in my wildest dreams thought that our country would be brought to a screeching halt by a virus.   Over the years you watch the virus movies and it simply never occurred to me that this could happen in my life and that it could happen so quickly.  We were on "shelter in place" due to our MN Governor's orders.   The world has slowed down.   Businesses are closed, churches are closed, people are unemployed.   It is a terrifying time for many people.  That evolved to some slow openings and social distancing.  Months later and nothing is normal.

Churches were closed for weeks.   So many churches, including mine, have adapted as best they can to reach their congregations.   Messages of hope and of God's love are important to many.  But, are we sharing that message outside of our comfort zone?   

Now that we no longer worship in the walls of a church, where are you worshiping?

I picked up a book I had started before and hadn't finished.   An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor.

The first chapter of the book talks about where we worship.   God actually told Jacob that he didn't want a "house of worship".   It is easy for Christians to hide in a house of worship.  We are with people we know, people we love.   We re comfortable.  But what do you do when you leave those four walls? 

Jacob encountered God in the wilderness.   When he awoke, he realized the place he was in was the "house of God."

We have had to learn to worship differently.   The whole world is the house of God.  Church can be a front porch, a river bank, a mountain top or even a chair at the dining room table.   Jesus comes to you where you are.   He doesn't need a fancy church, he just needs your heart.

I have been on a new (old)  journey.   Yes, it is another wellness journey.   I have done a lot of clean eating and weight loss programs.   I am always successful with them.  Then something happens.  Someone gets sick, or injured, or something happens at work and I fall back to old habits.   This new journey for me, will include a lot of self reflection.  Clean eating, reading and exercising. 

I added a couple other options, pray, devotion and write.

If you have followed my journey at all, you know that I am a stress eater and when I am caring for others, or stressed, I stop caring for myself.  I talked with our friend and trainer Jason.  I was almost in tears.   I said, "I need your help".  I need to lose this weight.  I will tell you more about the journey later, but he stepped up and is helping me get there.  

So.   Now is the time.

Where is your house of God?