Exercise, Calories, and All that Jazz!

Here I am rapidly approaching my one month-iversary with the MAC. And as far as the scale goes, I've lost 7.8...but to be honest...I think the scale is lying! I'm not sure what I expected to happen. I probably thought I would have instant results...or at least some sort of results, yet here I sit a month later and feel like I've accomplished nothing. Joy and Sean, who are both amazing and encouraging in everyway!, say that they can tell that I'm losing and that I'm getting more curvy [sean mostly noticed the curvy thing, although Joy did agree after I told her what he had said...might have been slightly awkward for her to walk up and feel my waist and say 'getting a little curvy aren't you'...lol!] Anyway, I'm thankful that someone notices a difference, I just wish I could too!

I was google-ing earlier trying to figure out why if I've given up soda and almost all sweets AND exercising, why I'm not losing weight. Everyone has a billion different opinions on the subject. The general consenses is that I should cut back on calories. The amount of calories I take in every day according to these 'experts' vary anywhere from 1250 to 4148. 4148?!?!?!? Are you serious?!?!?! By the way, 4148 would be like eating 3 Big Macs with Cheese and 3 large fries AND I WOULD STILL have enough calories left to get a large Sonic Butterfinger blast...with 30 calories to spare!!! My fitness guru [joy] and I were discussing this last night, I think somewhere between 1200 and 1500 is my goal per day...although right now I'm above that...not for today already, just in general...by the end of the day I will probably reach or pass that.

Losing weight isn't as much fun as everybody pretends it is. And although I know it would be counter productive, something about the pounds not just falling off the way I had hoped makes me want to eat a sonic butterfinger blast, don't worry, I'll still have 3478 calories left for today! =)

-r jo

Opinions?

Dear loyal reader,

Someone told me today that if I wanted to lose weight, I would need to take in less and less calories everyday, and lower the amount at the end of every week. Pretty much saying that if I started this week, I would need to take in 2450-ish a day and a year from now I should be taking in 1250-ish a day. This seems like an impossible goal. What do you think

-rjo

Let me attempt this in a non-sarcastic way.

I feel like God has been talking to me a lot recently. Maybe we are making up for the 3 or 4 months of me feeling like all of my prayers hit the ceiling and I wasn't hearing anything at all. Now I feel like we are in overdrive, making up for lost time while I was in one of my many rebellious seasons with God.

The thing that has been sticking out to me recently the most is that I feel like I'm a little bit...ok, a lot too critical of my brothers and sisters in Christ. Instead of spending my time praying for and encouraging others, I seem to spend it judging them and being angry at them. Sometimes I do feel like its a righteous angry, but not always. I especially have a tendancy to get this way when I'm confronted about something I'm not doing right, whether that be in my spiritual walk or in my small group leadership or lack there of. It is true that sometime it is neccessary to point things out to your peers or others you are in leadership with, but it needs to be done on a one on one basis, not in front of a group or behind the someones back. I am guilty of going about this wrong way, those scenarios listed above being personal experiences, something I've done to someone or that someone has done to me.

Also, God has also really been talking about gossip in the church. Its not like He is telling me this to 'Go spread the message to everyone else about it, your doing fine'...He's yelling at me. To be honest, its something He put on my heart over a month ago, but I have done a fine job of ignoring Him until now. I know this is going to sound awful, but I'll be honest, I would rather point out and make fun of the flaws of others than to work on myself. Its easy and less complicated than looking at yourself and trying to listen to God on what He is trying to do in you.

I don't know that this will apply to my one reader or not, but I did need to vent. =) yay for venting!

GO ME!!! I ROCK!!!

Holy cow! I did it! yay! ...lets see if i can do it again...

Apples and Peanut Butter: My day so far.