CrossFit and Fritters

Today I'm not aware of every single muscle in my body from the knees up like I was every time I moved a muscle yesterday. I'm still aware of about half of them, but the others have started to heal up a bit! I started CrossFit this week, and it is indeed quite an all around workout.

What is CrossFit you ask? Well, this is how it is described on the website of Fitness Experience, where I participate:
"CrossFit is a strength and conditioning program that uses functional movement and high intensity training so your body is ready for the unknown of life.  At CrossFit R3, our program is designed for everyone to succeed, no matter what your fitness level.  We utilize gymnastic, metabolic conditioning and Olympic lifting to challenge you physically and mentally,  but when you are done, you are empowered." 

(You are also tired. And every muscle in your body is just a little bit sore the next day. And a few of them are REALLY sore!) But it's very fun. I was happy that a middle aged couple is in our prep class so I'm not alone in there with all those strong agile young folks. Another week of two prep classes and then I hope to do it three days a week for the next couple of months. I figured this is a good time to do it, since it's hard to run with winter darkness and rain, and I hate treadmills. Besides, it's just fun to do something a little different.

Hmm, have you noticed that I've avoided mentioning how weigh-in day went on Tuesday? I gained a pound, ok? I'm not happy about it. I made some excuses, like there were four days in a row of food events, and I didn't track, and...I just like to eat, ok? At our Weight Watchers meeting, the topic was evening snacking. Why do you do it? Are you really hungry? I generally try to save some points for it, but I admit that on those days when I haven't tracked and I know good and well that I'm over my limit, I often have a little popcorn, a piece of fruit, or a little yogurt anyway. It's a habit. Right now, I find myself back in that place where I just feel like eating all the time, and I'm not resisting it the way I want to. Remember, LeAnn, you don't live your life just doing what you feel like. You exercise the will that God put within you to make smart choices!

The experts often encourage us to think about why we overeat. I am not one who enjoys examining my feelings and delving into my underlying motives. I can't really come up with any good reason, even after thinking about it for about five seconds, other than that I just like to eat. It's really enjoyable. Obviously there's a good reason why some food is labeled "comfort food".

I really did have occasion to indulge in some amazing and unique eating experiences last week. One was a fabulous French toast with pears, pecans and blueberry syrup,  enjoyed in the sunshine outdoors with a panoramic view in the company of wonderful friends.

 Another was a family evening to enjoy Mom's delicious homemade apple fritters. My niece Serena shows the uninhibited way this treat should be enjoyed!

Life's treats should definitely be enjoyed....occasionally!

My favorite healthy treat lately is vanilla Greek yogurt with diced pears, cinnamon, and a sprinkle of chopped walnuts. Wonderful for dessert or breakfast. What's your favorite healthy treat?

"You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." (Galatians 5:13-17, 22-24)

Bitin' the Hand that Feeds Me

What am I excited about? The new season of Biggest Loser starts today! It is recording as we speak. I'm gonna watch it as soon as I get done with this! Biggest Loser helped motivate me to kick start my weight loss two years ago, and I've been hooked on it ever since.

Good weigh in day today. Down 1.2 pounds for a total of 6.2. Not too many challenges this week. I thought I lost my activity monitor and went without it two whole days before I found it clipped onto my fabulous fleece zebra jammies yesterday morning when I donned them to ward off the morning chill as I was getting ready for work.  I'm just glad it hadn't gone through the washer. Again. And again. How amazing, it's true what they say. That thing continues to work even after going through the washer and dryer.

A few weeks ago at the W.W. meeting, I was amused by an older lady who kept shaking her head and rolling her eyes and making little tsk tsk noises as the leader and other people were talking. When discussing challenges, someone mentioned how weekends were harder because the whole routine is different. She scornfully said, "Well, you must all work or something. I'm retired, so my weekends are exactly the same as every other day of the week." Then when the importance of accurately tracking food by weighing and measuring was mentioned, she scoffed again, telling how she has so many sets of measuring cups and spoons, and five books to look up Points Plus, and she weighed and measured every single bite for five years and didn't lose any weight. Her doctor finally told her that she had to stop weighing and measuring because she was driving herself crazy. (Aha!)

Anyway, she became my friend today. Candy corn (one of my own personal weaknesses which I have not yet touched this fall) was mentioned (by someone other than me). My friend asked if I knew how many points it had. I didn't. She looked it up in two books she was carrying and told me she would go buy a bag and calculate the points for me. "Why thank you, but you don't have to do that. I'll look it up on eTools," said I. ("Did you find it yet? Did you find it yet?") Yes, 3 points for 1 ounce. But I don't know how many corn candies are in an ounce. She insisted she would buy a bag and figure it out for me.  But she won't eat any. What a nice person. I hope she not only informs me how many I can eat for 3 points but gives me the bag! What a nice person! (Is it proper to say corn candy or candy corn?)

All this to say, listening to her makes it especially obvious to me how important it is to realize that my routines and habits are not necessarily going to make sense to everyone else even if they bring success to me. There are basic things like eating appropriate portions of healthy food and getting some physical activity that we all need to do. But you can certainly lose and maintain weight without running. Maybe even without tracking your food. (But I doubt it!) Just kidding, there I go again. We all just need to figure out some specific things that help us stick to what we know we need to do, and not think we're superior to other people who are doing it wrong, I mean different!

Impulse eating is another thing we talked about today. I have to giggle when I think about a recent impulsive bite I took. Will was eating breakfast as I was heading off too work. As I leaned down to give a little goodbye smooch, a piece of toast deliciously slathered with Nutella was right there in his hand. I grabbed the hand and took a bite. Of the toast, not the hand, but sadly, a bit of his thumb did get in the way. My steady husband is not one who generally displays much reaction to pain, but he recoiled, dropping the toast, which hit the edge of the table, smearing it with Nutella on the way to a face down landing on his lap. I dashed to the sink to get a rag and clean up the mess. He shrank away from me in fear, resisting my efforts to clean him up. After I finally was able to stop laughing and stand up straight again, I expressed my great concern for his thumb and was happy to learn it was fine, no blood or anything.

Impulse eating. Avoid it whenever possible. Someone is likely to pay a price for it!

Sitting and Tasting

I skipped the Weight Watchers meeting last Tuesday. Since I was bombarded with nasty cold symptoms, I worked through my lunch break, trying to get a few essential tasks done so I could come home early and be sick in peace. That didn't work out so well for me. After getting off work about 4:30, I went to my friend Fred Meyers, stocked up on soup, juice and cold medicine, came home, ate my soup on my recliner, then slept until 11:15 when Will woke me up to go to bed. I stayed in bed sleeping or dozing until 2 pm the next day except one brief visit to the lavatory. After I got up, I lounged on my recliner for the rest of the day. Anyway, I sat around a lot last week. No exercise Tuesday through Friday. Wow.

So it is interesting that the WW meeting topic this week was "The Unhealthiest Thing You Do". Any ideas what that might be? Yep, it's sitting. They say the amount of time you spend sitting has the biggest impact on your health - the more you sit, the greater your risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and other ailments. So they encourage those of us with desk jobs to try to get up once an hour and move around. In fact, the goal is to get us walking five minutes of every hour.

How much do you sit? I have a desk job, but the printer is in the workroom next to the office. So is the coffee pot. I  also have to go in there to fill up my water container. Of course, the water and coffee consumption means I have to visit the little room down the hall. And then there are the copy machines that have paper jams and run out of ink, so I am frequently called upon to exercise my expertise in this area. I occasionally get to walk a kid with a bloody nose back to the health room, or go back there to get ice for a wimpy child with an ouchie. Once in awhile, I even provide outstanding service and walk a purchase order down to a classroom for a teacher (but more likely just to their mailbox!) or personally deliver a note to a child in a class. But enough about me and all my fascinating daily activities. The truth is, I spend a lot of time sitting at a desk. And in the winter, I spend a good bit of my evening on my recliner. So I will try to get up and move around more often.

Well, I lost 1.6 pounds in the past two weeks, which brings me to a total of five pounds lost in the past six weeks. I'm trying to track my food first thing in the morning, filling in what I'm planning to have for lunch and dinner. That really helps me know how many points I have left when other things come up during the day.

My sister Hope and I were talking this week, and I was surprised to learn that food still doesn't taste very good to her. It's been nine months since she fell and broke her neck, and I guess I just assumed that with all the amazing progress she has made, the taste buds would have recovered as well. (She's not very good at complaining!) She was saying that Pepsi is the one thing that tastes really good, and really salty foods are about the only thing that's really tasty.

I think about her a lot now when I'm eating something that's satisfyingly yummy! Which leads me to want to pray for her.

"Oh loving Heavenly Father, thank you so much for making food so delicious. Thank you for the ability to taste it. I am so grateful for fully functioning taste buds!  I don't understand why that blessing has been taken away from my sister, but I thank you for her attitude of thanksgiving and gratitude to you for all the gifts she does have. I ask that you would continue to heal her body and bring complete restoration and function to all the damaged nerves. Thank you that you are the source of strength, healing, and joy. Help us all to learn to be content with what you have given us."

"I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength." (Phillipians  4:11-13)

Pride and Humility

Have you noticed how people (like me) who are pursuing a healthy lifestyle that involves weight loss and exercise can become extremely self focused? Sometimes it seems that food choices, tracking, and exercise dominate our thoughts, conversations, and lives, boring everyone around us and eventually even ourselves. I've reached that point in the past, where I thought, "Forget it, this is just too much trouble. I don't want to be so focused on what I eat and how much I exercise."   Unfortunately, for a self-indulgent person with a food addiction, the alternative is to go back to overeating, morning, noon and night and in between, nearly every day. Because there's nothing self-focused about that, right?!

Balance. That's why I seek after both physical and spiritual fitness, because for me, they go hand in hand.

Recently, God brought some clarity to this dilemma and blessed me in an unexpected way. It started with worship team practice a couple Thursdays back. Our worship leader, Bryce, showed a short video clip of Francis Chan talking about humility. Some of the highlights that stuck with me:  Moses was more humble than anyone on the earth, and God spoke to him face to face. (Numbers 12)   He quoted Isaiah 57:15, "I live in a high and holy place but also with him that is contrite and lowly in spirit." The following statement really struck me, "The greatest reward for humility is intimacy with God." Intimacy with God! Now that's a goal worth striving for!

After the video, Bryce challenged us to seek intimacy with God by pursuing humility, defined as: stop thinking about ourselves and to think more about God and about other people. "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility, consider others better than yourself." (Phil. 2:3)

Oh yes. I need to stop thinking about me, me, me and instead, deliberately turn my focus to God and who he is, as well as to other people.

Fast forward to the next Sunday, thinking about humility all the while. I love to sing the worship songs with the team, and we had some really great ones. After our morning practice before church, I saw myself in the restroom mirror and berated myself for how stupid I looked. What was I thinking, wearing a pastel pink sweater on a blustery wet September morning? Ok, I was thinking, what matches my long black skirt, and the pink sweater with black trim fit the bill. Then I realized that my necklace, bracelet, and earrings definitely looked as if they had been grabbed randomly in a rush on my way out the door. I really need a personal fashion consultant. Good grief, I have to go stand in front of the church looking ridiculous. I went out in the foyer and my lovely friend Jan Schoen complimented me on how nice I looked. I humbly told her how foolish I felt wearing pastel pink when everyone else was wearing fall colors (and didn't mention my mismatched jewelry hoping she wouldn't notice!) She graciously pointed out some pastel pink among the appropriate fall colors of her scarf. When I walked away from her I realized... I was focusing on MYSELF! Just get over it! You are here to worship God! You are wearing what you are wearing, now just forget about it! Oh, God, please help me to focus on You!

God is so good about answering our prayers. When the service started, the words to the songs made me forget about myself and get lost in the presence of God. Next thing I knew I was standing there, trying to sing in a quavering voice with tears streaming down my cheeks. (God helped me not to worry about looking stupid, but I think he did remind me to just step away from the microphone a little bit!)
"I will be still, Know you are God."

Recently I'd been kind of wondering if it was maybe a little egotistical and prideful to have a blog to share my fitness journey. (And besides that, it hardly gets any "Likes" or comments when I post the link on Facebook so maybe my pride was getting a little wounded!) So this has helped clarify for me. "My" fitness journey is not just about me, just as yours is not just about you. It is only by the grace of God that I enjoy the health and strength to exercise, and that I have the mental and emotional capacity to exercise the spirit of self-discipline that he has given to me. I know many of us are on this journey together, and I want to encourage all of us to get our eyes off ourselves and fix them on God. And I'd love to hear from you how God is helping you to do that! A shared journey is easier than a lonely journey.

One of my favorite quotes from Oswald Chambers, "Shut out every other thought and keep yourself before God in this one thing only--my utmost for His highest. I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and Him alone. "...my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death."---Philippians 1:20

I love the song "Still" that we sang that Sunday morning, and I leave you with a link to play it and get it in your mind as well.
"When the oceans rise and thunders roar
I will soar with you above the storm
Father you are King over the flood
I will be still, know you are God."