Part 5

I'm going to attempt to bring you all up to date in this post. Well, I'll at least hit the highlights!

I left off when I began to seriously work and chart my weight loss in Oct. 2007. I remember feeling excited and I was highly motivated that very first week! According to my journal, I exercised 5 days that week, and I dramatically cut down my portion sizes. I can clearly remember that! I tried to eat slowly (so my food would last longer) and I ate as healthy as I knew how - tons of fruits and veggies. I also remember having very sore muscles, probably because I was using muscles that hadn't moved in awhile. Oh, it was painful! You know, the kind of muscle pain where you have to suck in your breath and grit your teeth just to make it up or down a flight of stairs! It was a difficult week. I thought I was doing all the right things, but I really had no clue. I lost 2 pounds that first week, and I was disappointed. I thought I should have been able to lose more! In my journal, I wrote, "My conclusion for not losing more (weight) is that I need to exercise more and harder. I don't know how I could eat less or a smaller amount. It'd be just like fasting!...I know the weight isn't going to just fall off of me, because I didn't get this way overnight. But I think the reality that this is going to be a long process is sinking in a little more."

The 2nd week, I fought disappointment and discouragement, because I thought that I had done so well the 1st week, and it had resulted in only 2 pounds lost. I really struggled with feeling like a failure and I had to fight the lie that this was too hard and overwhelming. I lost a pound that week, but I was praying through my disappointment and asked the Lord for grace to just keep going.

The 3rd week was a great week. (According to my journal entry!) I wrote that I was "trying to come up with more healthy concoctions" and I "still haven't eaten any chips or candy". I was thrilled beyond words when I stepped on the scale and found that I'd lost 4 pounds that week. That was a huge and unexpected blessing! An emotional high, for sure.

I won't bore you with a week-to-week account from the past 32 weeks. :-) I wish I could say every week was like week 3, but that's not true. It was tough! I felt like a sponge as I grabbed for every book or article on weight loss I could find, and I asked the Lord for wisdom to discern what I was reading. I didn't want to follow blindly after the whims and ideas of man. I wanted to know God's thoughts on weight loss, and what He wanted me to do/eat.

In November, a turning point came for me, specifically in regard to exercising. One Tuesday night, my mom turned on the TV as she was folding laundry, and there was a show on that caught her attention. On the show, there was a group of people taking turns stepping onto a scale and to see how much weight they had lost the previous week. I was also in the living room, and we both sat there intrigued and trying to figure out what was going on. We came to find out the show was called The Biggest Loser, and we had caught the last few minutes of that week's episode. We decided it looked very interesting, and we planned to watch it again the next week. Little did we know this would start a new Tuesday night tradition for the May family!

For those of you not familiar with The Biggest Loser, I'll explain the basics. Overweight contestants are chosen from all around the country and brought to "The Ranch" (an exercise campus in CA) to work with personal trainers and compete as teams (and then as individuals) to see who can lose the most weight. How do they lose the weight? Intense exercising and eating healthy. My kind of show!!! I could totally relate to what the contestants were going through, and I learned SO much from watching them. I soaked up the tips and advice from the personal trainers, especially about exercising. This was the "old-fashioned" way of losing weight that I was looking for! No surgery, pills, or crash diets. They focus on healthy nutrition and exercising. Plain and simple! Their approach is balanced, even though the whole point of the show is to see who can lose the most weight. (They don't starve the contestants and work them like pack-mules. :-)) The trainers are EXCELLENT, and they deal with emotional hurts along with re-training the physical. Anyway, I was hooked, and so was my family. :-) This became a highlight of my week; an emotionally uplifting time as I was motivated to keep pushing onward. The circuit training I do right now is from The Biggest Loser Fitness Program book, and I love it! *However, I must add that this is not a Christian show, and I do not agree with everything said or done there. A lot of drama is added to make it more "entertaining" to the public, and it's not always uplifting. This is where discernment came into play again.* Overall, it's a great show for those of us "flying solo"!

The next few months, I kept pressing toward my goal of weighing 200lbs by January 1st. I fought through times of sickness and "that time of the month". :-) I survived Thanksgiving and Christmas baking. I'm proud to be able and look back and say that I never once gained any weight during that time. Even over Christmas! (The week of Christmas, I didn't lose any weight - but I didn't gain, either!)

I'd love to say that I met my goal, but I didn't. As I've said before, it was certainly an ambitious one. :-) I weighed in at 208lbs on January 1st. Still a huge accomplishment for me! I lost 21 pounds in 11 weeks. Something I'd never dreamed possible! I looked different, I felt different, and I was motivated to keep going. I set a new goal for January through March of this year. I wanted to weigh 185 pounds by the end of March. By God's grace, I was able to meet that goal - even surpass it by a pound! I weighed in at 184lbs at the end of March. Hurray!

And now, I working toward my 3rd weight loss goal. I want to weigh 170 pounds by the end of June. Only 4 more pounds to go, which seems like nothing, but it is getting harder and harder to lose it! You'd think that exercising for an hour every day and eating 1,200 calories would cause the weight to drop off, but it's putting up a fight. I thought this goal might have been too easy, but now I'm glad I didn't set it for more. Especially seeing I'm going to be away from home 2 weeks out of June. (Remember, change is AWFUL for me!)

I'm continuing to learn and grow, and I'm enjoying the journey. (I wasn't last week, but I am this week!) I'm peacefully resting in the knowledge that my weight does not determine my worth or value to the Lord. His love for me will not change! My desire is simply to please Him and bring Him glory in every area of my life. Weight included.

Gratefully His ~ Bekah