Unsocially Social

This last week and a half has been such a strange mix of miserable and unbelievably freeing! While I crave sugar like the boogie man craves small children, I have no desire to eat it again. I feel great! Well, mostly great. I still feel like crud, but I do have more energy now than I've had in months... and I'm attributing that all to the lack of unnatural sugars in my system. However, it was everything I could do to keep myself from buying a bag of dark chocolate caramels after work today. I literally drove by Dollar General drooling because I knew behind those doors a bag of Riesen chocolates had my name on it. Ah well. I survived.

I think Facebook has been the worst part of the last couple of weeks. While I am excited about the overwhelming freedom I have to not be so attached to status updates and spying on my friends, I have felt stupidly lonely. If I come to understand anything out of these 40 days, it'll be this: I am unsocially social. I miss my Facebook friends. Sometimes it feels like they are the only friends I have! Funny, they are real friends; but there's a difference between cyber friendship and the real thing. I feel secluded, but that's only by my own doing. I realize now how negligent I have been in regards to my real social life. This must be remedied.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the next 29 days teaches me! Right now feels just a little unstable; but I'm sure God has something great to teach me by day 40.

Until next time...

Lent...?

I have never before practiced Lent; but I recently started attending a Lutheran church and I've been feeling convicted on a lot of things, particularly in regards to my priorities in life. With tomorrow being Ash Wednesday, I feel the timing is perfect. I am giving up two things that take a negative priority in my life: Sugar and Facebook.

That's 40 days folks. I'm excited, though. I spend so much time on Facebook, it's ridiculous. I think back to the days before social networking and wonder what the heck I did with all of my time! I'm looking forward to getting away from it for a while. Not only will it force me to find other, more productive ways to fill my day (like... homework), it'll remind me to focus more on God time.

I don't feel like I need to get into the sugar thing. Anyone reading this blog knows and fully understands my difficulties with sugar. My hopes are that by promising the Big Guy I'll stay away from sugar, I'll be more accountable; but one thing I'm praying for is to be healed of my unhealthy craving all together. I'll still eat fruit as natural sugars aren't where my problems lie, I just can't ever seem to control myself when candy, cakes, brownies and ice cream are around!

There you go. Now I'll be expecting each of you to hold me accountable! If you see activity on my Facebook between now and Easter Sunday, yell at me!

I'm cool now

That's right! I have an iPhone. This officially makes me cool!

:)

Just one...

There's a new rule in my life. It's called, "Just One." That's right. Just. One. Just one cup of coffee. Just one sugary treat. Just one serving of dinner. Just one round of Tetris. Just one random blog reading. Those two little words have taught me so much about myself and how simple it really is to limit myself while abiding by this rule. In fact, "Just One" has become so ingrained in my head this last week that I've been applying it to ALL aspects of my life!

In Just One week:

Just one workout. Just one God-date. Just one random act of kindness. Just one homework assignment. Just one full night of sleep. Just one financially responsible day. Just one day being mindful of my words/actions toward others. Just one selfless act toward my family. Just one. Just one. Just one.

Just.

One.

I need to fix this faulty rule.

Perseverance. It's a funny word.

Because it's Saturday night, my homework is complete and I'll be snowed-in in the morning anyway, I've decided to write a late-night blog :)

Today I started P90X...again. I love it. I really do. Except, my last bout produced a rather macho form of me and I had been pretty proud of my success. I'm still proud of my success; but the funny thing about succeeding is that a requires this minor detail called perseverance.

I keep an exercise journal to help me keep track of my progress. My last entry had me doing over 120 push-ups, about a million and twelve ab exercises and I could even make it a full 30 seconds on the wall squats ;) That was about four weeks ago. Today was a completely different story. I managed to force about 13 push-ups, and I could hardly make it through the ab workout. It's sad how quickly my body goes from macho to nacho.

I can't help but wonder where I would be in my weight loss/fitness goal had I stuck with the program and persevered over my lazy bouts! I'll betcha I wouldn't have gained four pounds back and I would be feeling about 79% better than I do at this present moment. My clothes would fit me better. I would be THAT MUCH closer to my goal.

If I don't start now, I bet four weeks from now I will wish I would have persevered passed today.

Ugh.

On a lighter note, I managed to fall in love with sweet alternatives to sugar, which has possibly saved my life. Haha! No really. Pancakes made from bananas, peanut butter and eggs, cookies sweetened with pureed fruit... I think I can handle this no-unnatural-sugar thing after all!

Falling behind...

Ever wonder why it's so easy to fall off the health wagon? I do. I don't understand why I don't stick with it. I feel so much better when I'm exercising, eating right and just plain BOYCOTTING sugar!

In the last two weeks I've gained 4 pounds, exercised once and eaten multiple sugar treats daily. I. Feel. Disgusting. Yuck.

But, you know what? I am 100% in control of what I put into my body, so I have no one to blame but myself. The journey from here will only get better if I make it happen. So, sugar is out again. Only this time, I am trying to find alternatives. Rather than completely depriving my sugar-driven self of sweets, I am going to start planning healthy daily snacks that contain nothing but natural fruit sugars.

The last couple of days I've enjoyed banana peanut butter pancakes (1 banana, 2 TBS peanut butter and 2 eggs... cooks just like pancakes!) without the yucky feeling I get when I eat normal pancakes. It satisfies the sweet craving without adding bad-for-you sugars! This made me think what else can I use as a substitute?

I'm looking all over the place for cookie and muffin recipes void of unnatural sugars and so far, I think I may have some good ideas! Of course, when it all comes down to it, I'll probably have to mix up a few recipes and make it my own as sugar isn't the only thing I'm trying to avoid; but at least I have some ideas now!

So here's to (another) fresh start! I wonder if I'll make it through February without giving in??

Updates!

Because I am currently without online access at home, I haven’t been able to post updates on how I’m doing nearly as frequently as I would like. I feel like there’s a lot I could write; but for my readers’ sanity, I’ll keep this short and sweet.

Diet:

Since receiving my Girl Scout cookies about a week ago, I haven’t done well with my goal to eat healthy. What’s funny about that, though, is that I’ve hardly eaten any of the Girl Scout cookies! My rule is that the cookies can’t come home with me… so if I want a cookie, the box gets passed around the office. This has worked wonders for my “diet” as I am a really, really selfish person and have never been good at sharing ;)

However, even though I haven’t gorged myself on cookies, eating one has introduced sugar back into my daily life and suddenly I find it much more difficult to say “no” to treats. Sadly, it’s not just sugary treats… I ate McDonald’s today. I hate McDonald’s. This isn’t good.

With that said, I feel it’s necessary to remove sugar from my diet again. When I’m not eating sugar, I don’t crave things like fried, processed foods, chips, starches, etc. So here we go for round two!

Exercise:

Diet isn’t the only thing I’ve struggled with. Classes started up again last week, which means that my weekly schedule is a little off the rocker. Originally I planned to exercise with a couple of my coworkers early in the morning, but after a several failed attempts to still sleeping body at 5:00 in the morning to run a few laps around the gym, I decided that I would just have to make my afternoon workouts work. I want them to matter, which means that I need to be able to push myself.

Unfortunately this means I need to figure out how to balance everything out in the evenings, which has been difficult. But I’m determined to make it work! Tomorrow starts round two for exercise as well as a healthy diet J

Spiritual Life:

So far I am a regular attendee at Lutheran Church of Hope for three weeks running! Church this morning was amazing, and horribly convicting. One quote that stuck with me today is this, “God will never allow you to be spiritually satisfied until you realize that spirit is about serving, not consuming.” I was reminded today of my laziness as a Christian. We have been called to make disciples – to serve others in every way we can – not feed ourselves in order to feel good. A new goal of mine is to find a way every day to serve someone else. I have yet to figure out how that’s going to work, but I’m pretty sure God will provide clarity for me in that arena ;)

I attended the church’s young adult discussion group for the first time Thursday night. There was no doubt in my mind that I was supposed to be there. In fact, I may or may not have tried to create excuses to keep me from going. One in particular, I needed to get my oil changed in my car. Now, Thursday was my comp day, so I had plenty of time to have this done pretty early in the day. Instead I dropped my car off at 2:00, was told it would be 4:00-4:30 before it could be looked at and it would probably take them about an hour to an hour and a half to do the work. The class starts at 5:30, so I made up my mind that I would just go home after my car was done. It was totally intentional! To be honest, I was terrified to go. Silly, right?

God had a different plan. I got a phone call at 4:00 saying that my car was done and ready to be picked up. This meant that I had an hour and a half to kill until class started. Despite my intentions to remain anti-social, I walked into the classroom, was introduced to someone right off the bat, we hit it off, exchanged phone numbers and are now friends.

What’s more? I met about half a dozen other awesome people who have come out of similar spiritual droughts as mine. We were all looking for the same thing – deeper, more meaningful relationships with God and fellow Christians. This is exactly what I need. Exactly. Though I had intended to bypass the young adult service that followed the discussion group, I couldn’t. I needed more, and boy was I glad I stayed. The worship service was amazing, and I can’t wait until next time.

Funny how God works, right?

That pretty much wraps it up for me! Here’s to a better week physically and academically, and my cup is raised for an even better God-experience this week.

I am blessed.