Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

My loss their gain challenge

Beginning again

Five months ago, I made a promise. I pledged to donate money for every pound I lost by the end of the year. Others joined the pledge, either with donations or support or a weight loss pledge of their own.

I’m here to tell you that I’ve failed. But that’s not the end of the story.

Since I made that promise, I overate at church camp. I let my workouts slide while we visited family in Illinois two different times. I ate “comfort food” after our basement flooded and I didn’t want to deal with the reality of clean-up and loss. And I took the month of November to write a novel.

So I find myself here, the 1st of December, having made negative progress, closer to 200 pounds than I’ve ever been when not pregnant or just having had a baby. Yet I’m resolved to not give up.

I restarted my twice-a-week 5 a.m. workouts this morning. And even though Christmas is coming, and sweets and goodies abound, I’m determined to keep it under control.

Can I just say what I’m thinking?

I DON’T WANT TO BE FAT!

There. That’s my fear. I see the misery in the faces of Biggest Loser contestants and I know that not much separates me from the downward spiral they’ve experienced.

Maybe that’s too dramatic. Or maybe it’s realistic. I just know that I’m not getting any younger and losing weight isn’t going to get any easier.

So.

I’m restarting my quest to lose weight and raise money for widows and orphans in Liberia. And I’m extending my deadline to March, at least.

“What we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down.” — Mary Pickford, actress. (Also similar to a Chinese proverb.)

I have fallen. But I will get up.

I will check in monthly, here, with my progress.

Stay tuned.

And help inspire me.

How do you keep your weight loss goals?

Nowhere to go but down

So I’ve been at this weight loss challenge for 2 months now with nothing but gain to show for it. I’ve gained weight. I’ve gained perspective. I’ve gained insight. I’ve also lost some things, too. Desire, motivation, pride.

Besides the actual act of losing weight, I’m struggling right now to make exercise and eating right a priority. We’ve had to — and will have to — make some tough decisions about what’s going to be most important to our family. Exercise is part of it, but in the last two weeks, we haven’t been able to follow through on that. Spending time together as a couple, time as a family, my husband’s last year of seminary, restoring the house to some kind of normal after being gone for two weeks … these are what we’ve spent our time on.

The next two weeks won’t be “normal” by any means — we’re having company; we’re taking a trip to Denver for my cousin’s wedding. I haven’t finished unpacking from the last trip yet and I’m already starting to think about packing for the next one.

I feel like I’m waiting for conditions to be “perfect” for exercise to fit into the routine. I know I’m kidding myself. Life with two little ones will never be perfectly right for making exercise a priority.

Help me out, here. How do you make exercise a priority? What suffers when that happens? What benefits do you get from it?