Monday, May 31, 2010

Delays, Are They Real or Subconscious?


Today was to be "D" day. We were very much intending to start today! But, Billy hasn't quite figured out how to configure the pull-up bars from the rafters and so we must wait a bit longer. Tragedy or Triumph? I don't know, maybe we both are secretly rejoicing at the prospect of putting off this self-induced torture a bit longer? Sort of Freudian slip kinda thing! 
Who knows?


So, in lieu of working my arms into oblivion, I shall do yard work and make a batch of Kambucha! It's nearly 100 degrees here in TX so I think I will work up a pretty good sweat.


Off the subject but highly important: Today is Memorial Day...Thank you Veterans and their families! I know freedom ISN'T free!

Friday, May 28, 2010

Count Down...

The time is drawing near...the ball is about to drop in Time's Square...P90X is looming big on the horizon.

We have previewed the videos. I was hoping that just by watching them, and appreciating the level of difficulty, that it would somehow have an effect on my body. Not so. Seriously, we just watched them to see what kind of equipment we would need, and what sort of set up the shed (aka "our gym") should have.

I'm thinking a defibrillator in one corner, a massage chair in another, and a smattering of barf-bags will probably cover all of the bases. These videos are so hard-core; it'll be like nothing I have ever encountered.

Really, I am excited about it. I mean, if I can't walk for days because I am ridiculously sore, the kids will get to wait on me hand and foot! They can bring me iced lattes and rub my shoulders... this is going to be better than I thought! Bring it on!

Monday, May 24, 2010

Momentarily Freaked Out



Today we are expecting a good friend that has a landscaping business to swoop down on our yard and create some magic. We have lived in our home for nearly 8 years and have only had minimal landscaping that we have eked out ourselves, due to the magnitude of the job.


So, yesterday, when my husband said he needed to "get our shed ready for tomorrow," I was puzzled at why our friend would need to do anything with our shed...it was our lawn that was needing attention! When I asked him what he meant by that, my husband replied, "ready for doing P90X."


Huh? Say what? Tomorrow? This was a news flash I was unprepared for! I thought we were at least another week away from starting...or at least there would have been some psych-ourselves-up talk to give me an idea of what to expect on Monday.


Turns out he thought we had discussed starting then...but that wasn't exactly the conversation that I remembered. So--whew!--we decided that we should put off to next week what we could have begun today! (????)


That sounds really lame, but I just gotta have more mental prep and prayer to dive into this thing. So, one more week of P90 for us, and then next week the pain will officially begin!

Friday, May 21, 2010

Confessions of a Lazy Woman

They say that it takes 40 days of a repeated activity to create a new habit. I am not sure who “they” are, but I have been getting up at 6:15 for the past three years to help my son prepare for school and I have yet to make a habit from it. Let’s see, with weekends and summer vacations and holidays aside, that makes around 540 days that I have pushed that snooze button come 6:15, and when the weekend arrives, I sleep right on through my weekday waking time by a good two to three hours! I am not any closer to becoming a morning person after three years!
Seventeen years ago I had a dental hygienist friend share that if you could only brush your teeth or floss for the rest of your life, flossing would be the best choice for your teeth. Although I had rarely flossed to that point, I immediately acquired a faithful habit to floss my teeth, and have rarely missed a day since!
I wonder how “they” would explain that?!
Proverbs 19:2 tells us that “even zeal is not good without knowledge...”, which explains why one can undertake many “good” things and burn out quickly because we just don’t fully grasp the benefit. I guess I am still looking for the “good” in “good morning” at 6:15 am... and it is still alluding me!
As I approach this P90X experience that looms over my summer, I am aware of the need to arm myself with knowledge of how important this 90 day event will be in my life! You see, I believe it will be every bit as challenging for me mentally as it is going to be physically. And, frankly, I am not an endorphin junky, nor am I a Type A “git-er-done” personality. I am inherently lazy, I must confess. I have always felt-- deep down in my secret, unrealistic heart-- that I am called to live a life of leisure.  
Due to good genetics, that I can take no credit for, I grew up eating whatever I wanted (which did not include much of anything healthy...corn was about my only “vegetable”) and was able to remain stick thin. The need to gain weight was my excuse to over indulge in junk food galore. I mean over-the-top galore! Tanning in summer with a canister of Pringles and a large carton of Whoppers was a day well spent in my mind!
Oh, I definitely developed some habits the first 20 years of my life. Mostly the habit of only doing what comes easy and with very little effort. I had a lot of natural ability that kept me from needing to work hard for things I wanted. My desires revolved around satiating my desires, and it was a catch 22 of self indulgence that I still struggle with today.
Marriage and homeschooling four children tend to beat the laziness out of a person but that ugly skeleton in my closet still likes to come tumbling out pretty regularly. And, although I haven’t wanted to gain weight the past, oh, 15 years, I still only carried around an extra ten pounds or so, which is easy enough to hide when you are 5’ 8”. But that 10 pounds has slowly crept up the last few years and the blubber in the middle has become increasingly hard to suck in. It has also been increasingly hard to take any of that blubber off, the older I get! 
Life being what it is, I am busy all of the time, tired most of the time and have justified my lack of working out quite believably. This past year I’ve noticed a marked change in my mental self; I have gone from at least sincerely wanting to change my slothful ways to reluctantly wanting to change and on to (almost) giving up because it is just so hard to change! Hard to find the time, hard to find the “want to”. Ultimately, having the “want to” will cause me to find the time, I am having to admit, and that desire is waning with each passing year. 
There’s a little, feeble voice of reason deep down that whispers a harsh reality: “If you don’t do it now, you never will. You are teetering on a precipice of will: what you choose now is going to define you for the rest of your life.” I can feel a sort of “biological clock” ticking...urging me to do this while I can, or I will just give up and eventually find that I am trapped in my weakness and even calloused to the Spirit’s conviction in this area of my life.
Interestingly, Proverbs 19:15 states, “laziness induces deep sleep,” and I can tell you that rings awfully true when I get into a pattern of extreme self-indulgence. When I readily justify going back to bed in the mornings and taking naps during the day, the more I want to go back to bed in the morning and take a nap during the day. Vicious cycle.
The next line of Proverbs 19:15 proclaims that “a lazy person will go hungry.”  How true that was for the time period in which it was written! Growing and harvesting crops and making every meal from scratch is hard work! If only the lazy people of Bible times had the pre-packaged junk food of our age, they wouldn’t have had to experience such hunger! Like most of us Americans, we can continue our SAD diet, fending off hunger, and remain inactive... and then get on about half-dozen prescription meds when we reach middle age. Ah! The wonders of Western civilization!
One area that, over the years, I have gained a lot of knowledge about is healthy foods and the benefits of eating a more primitive diet. Sprouting grain, grinding flour, drinking raw milk...I have much head knowledge and quite a bit of practical experience in this realm. The zeal to eat better and the knowledge of how to do that have made the mental procrastination even harder because I really do know better...and yet I continue to make really bad choices. Bad choices are just soooo much easier to make than good ones, aren’t they? Or is it just me?
Especially when you can hide those choices behind being tall and fairly thin. Which has morphed into hiding behind being tall and wearing clothes that fit in a certain way to hide the fact that I am not so thin anymore. Which is trying to morph into giving in and buying the next size up in clothes...
Enough is enough. The only thing stopping me, is me. My weak flesh and my years of coasting along must come to an end or there will be no end in sight to my self-loathing. That may sound very unbiblical but I don’t know what else to call it when you continually ignore the urging of the Lord in an area...God invented guilt to drive us to Him and his forgiveness and his wisdom...when we push that aside the conviction decays into condemnation as we continue to serve ourself. Walking around under a cloud of guilt is unhealthy and will allow all sorts of problems, physically and emotionally, to set in. God does not intend for us to live that way yet it is often our default setting, sort of a self-sabotaging mode.
So I am trying to get prayed up and psyched up for this “boot camp” workout. I cannot fool myself with any sort of illusions of ease and natural desire. This is going to be hard! But--hard is ok! Hard is good! Hard is what I need...EASE is my enemy! This must be my battle cry this summer!
I need this transformation Lord, just as much in my mental state as in my physical body! Let this journey be one of discovering new strength in You and a time of building character within myself that will overflow to other areas of my life. Help me to keep my eyes on You, to offer my pain of body and mind to You as a living sacrifice each day. It is nothing compared to the sacrifice of your Son, but it is the cross I am to take up at this time in my life. With You, I know that all things are possible. I am so weak but I know, Lord, that You are my strength. Thank you!

I'm baaack........!!!

Do I dare crack open this other blog of mine and try to record my fitness journey? Should I dust “Morphing Myself” off and actually try, yet again, to morph myself?
My silence and utter secrecy that I even have this blog is not an indicator of having given up. It is just me not feeling like I have anything consistent to offer up in a blog format. My roller coaster ride doesn’t make for an interesting read. But, I am sure I have not fully explored the possibilities of journaling my plight to conquer the Standard American Diet (aka SAD) and my own lazy tendencies. I guess there’s part of me that expects to fail... and so I just lay low.
One of the blessings of marriage, and there are many, is sharing struggles with your mate. My husband and I both have a major sweet tooth and a yen for really good coffee (which goes great with dessert...) and have therefore had similar challenges in the eating right and exercising department. Sounds more like we are a bad influence on each other, eh? Well, what fun is a love of a certain food if you can’t enjoy it with the one you love? But as we have bonded over food, we have also had some poundage creep up in unwanted areas. 
Recently we started bonding over exercise and that has been the greatest motivator! What a difference it makes to have my man work out with me! One of our biggest reasons for getting in shape is to please each other. Though there were times in the past that we wanted to workout together, it has not been logistically possible until recently. Kids getting older and more self-sufficient is a big help. So, if you are at that very mom-reliant stage in life, hang in there, they DO grow up enough to be independent!
My husband and I have been working out with Tony Horton’s P90 videos. We went from level 1-2 to level 3-4 and are working our way up to the hardcore P90X that some of you may have seen on late night infomercials. We really bought it before the P90 but realized we were way out of shape to do the P90X version. So we have been working our way up the fitness ladder. The last two weeks have been somewhat of a set back with a house full of company and no time to exercise so we are jumping back in to the P90 3-4 for a week or two before diving in head first to the P90X.
Which brings me to why I am bothering to eek out a blog and bare my sugar loving soul to the world. I really do want to transform my body and my mind! I think I am finally sick enough of whining about it to do something whole hog. Not just exercise, but eating right too. I plan on writing about this journey and maybe even posting some pictures so others can see my progress. (Gulp!).
One thing I have learned is that what I want to accomplish cannot be done for myself, or even for my husband and family...at least not first and foremost. It must be to the glory of God as He gives me wisdom that I must be accountable for, now that He has revealed it to me. All this head knowledge about nutrition and exercise does NOT a healthy “me” make! I must put it into practice. 
James 4:17 “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.” 

Galatians 6:9 “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” 

Romans 12:1 “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”
Just a few verses that the Lord has brought to mind. I think there are times when I try to convince myself that taking the time to exercise is a vain waste of time. I now feel like my reasons for wanting to get in shape have often been vain...but exercise is a tool that I can use to glorify God in my body, if I will allow Him to teach me this as a discipline. (Not the punishment type!). It is so NOT ME to grit my teeth and work super hard in order to physically do something that it will HAVE TO BE HIM! I have rested on my “born tall and skinny” laurels for too long. My metabolism has all but stopped with age and I need to actually work for the healthy physique that I am capable of having. 
My plan is to report in several times a week and give an update along with some food tips that may encourage your kitchen habits along the way too. Feel free to leave comments, tips or prayers! It would be great to know I was taking this journey with a few others this summer. 
I could go on and on...oh, if only working out came as easily as writing...