This post brought to you by my favorite couples book: "Men are Like Waffles/Women are Like Spaghetti"

I need to be in bed.
I don't want to be in bed.
I'm tired of getting up at 6am in the summertime.
It's the summer.
That's why I teach school.
I've said it before:
If you choose an occupation based on the number of days you don't have to actually be at work, is that really the job for you?
But Vacation Bible School is this week.
And I must be there,
to teach boys in the second grade
how to string beads on a necklace.
"If you want the Kangaroo in the middle,
don't string it on first!
Lay your beads out in a pattern,
then add them to the string
IN THAT ORDER!"
Boys don't know this stuff intuitively,
like girls.
All that N.O.W. crap from the 70's
was just that...Crap!
Boys and girls are different.
Face it.
It was meant to be that way.
I heard "Black Betty" on the radio on the way home from church today.
What is that song about?
I don't know, but I LIKE it.
I'm humming it right now.
Joe's listening to the Beatles on his crackberry.
"Come together..."
In Norah Jones' song,
"I don't know why I didn't come"
What is the "House of Fun" to which the lyrics refer?
I've never figured out that song.
But I like it.
I wish I could sing like Norah Jones.
I can hit the notes,
but I can't match the rasp in her voice.
She probably smokes.
Allison Kraus used to, and she's got an AWESOME voice.
Maybe I should...
go to bed!

I luvz meh sum lolcat

Especially this one.



LOLCats

The application is going in June 30, along with an application to have two of my songs judged for an upcoming recording project by Embassy Music in Nashville. YAY.

Dis callz fuh deh cheezbuhger!

Sincerely Yours

Hello, dear little blog.

I haven't forgotten you.

It is summer time, and as such, I am looking for every opportunity to be out of the house. Beach, shopping, pool, church. Don't have to look real hard with that last one.

Plus, the fact that I made known my conviction about needing to lose weight has suddenly made me very self-conscious. It's almost like I am reading into people's glances at me, as if they're saying, "Okay, you want to lose weight. I'm watching. When can we see some progress?"

I still haven't done anything official. I have switched from regular soft drinks to diet...and more frequently to water. I am eating a smoothie made with light yogurt, 1c fresh fruit, 1/2c light fruit juice, and ice cubes. It's tolerable. I'm not going back for seconds. Kinda reverting to the old "WeighDownWorkshop" method, but I'm trying not to be so much about cravings, and be more about balance in proportions of carbs to protein to fruits/veggies.

Jillian says I'm a balanced oxidizer. My cravings range all over the place. I don't do well cutting out one type of food. And I feel best after a balanced meal - 1/4carbs, 1/4protein, 1/2veggies. So that's what I'm working on right now. Exercise hasn't been added into the equation yet, at least not officially. I am trying to find an excuse to walk more than a few steps a day. But it hasn't really gone any further than that. It will. I really want a bike. A good one!

So, dear blog, don't judge me. Love me. Hang in there, and I'll be in to visit you with progress reports and spiritual insights....and dare I say - epiphanies?

All Things New

I don't know what the deal is with needing to change so much lately. I changed the face of the blog. Still not sure how I like it. What do you think? Is it too hard to read?

I feel like changing myself. But I think this is a good thing. Looking back on the last seven years of gorging, I feel like repenting. That means a 180 degree turn. Turning from selfishness and turning toward obedience. The whole eating thing is just a manifestation of an inward desire for control.

This might make some of you blush, but maybe it'll help you get a sense of what I'm talking about.

Joe and I moved from dating to engaged in a period of seven weeks. Day one, we started going steady. Day two, I made Joe tell me how sure he was about where this was going. He was 100% sure about us. Day three, Joe said "I love you" for the first time. Day four, we kissed for the first time - a sweet, innocent peck that I never saw coming. Day five, he told his momma he had met the girl he was going to marry.

From then on, we were inseparable. He was working nights as a security guard, so we would meet on the front porch of the music building at 9pm or so and sit and talk and share sweet kisses until he had to go to work at 10. I was addicted to his kisses. I always wanted one more. And sometimes, when he went in for the gentle peck, I would put a death grip on the back of his neck until I got the reward I was looking for. Every now and then he'd have to pull my arm back, because I was actually hurting his neck.

(**whew** Getting kinda warm in here. Maybe I should write for Harlequin.)

That death grip is equivalent to how I feel about food. Just ONE more. The BIG slice. STILL not enough.

It's hard to admit you have a problem. It's embarrassing. You think you're the only one. And with weight and food, repentance should be evident. I always hated it the first month or so of losing weight, when it was really obvious, because it was mostly water. I guess it's like that unwritten social rule of pregnancy - everyone thinks it's okay to rub your belly when you're pregnant. Well, apparently, everyone thinks it is okay to comment on your weight loss. I feel so humiliated by the fact that I ever needed to go to such lengths to begin with. I'd rather no one mention it.

But here I am, at 32 years old, weighing more than I have ever weighed in my life, a year after starting and quitting fertility treatments....which, let me TELL you, had a BIG impact on my eating habits and weight. I am FINALLY ready to deal with what I have taken seven years to put on. I think my first goal is to get back to my post-Venezuela weight. That's 85 pounds. And even then, I will still have a BMI greater than 25.

There it is. I have confessed my sins. I have set my goal. Now all that is missing is the how.

Oh, and I still haven't addressed Part Two.

There is no such thing as a quick fix.

I tried a new sunless tanning spray this weekend. It was my first diet strategy. Fat that is tan looks a lot better than fat that is white.

It didn't work.

I look like I have a disease.

I look like I'm turning into Michael Jackson.

I'd post a picture, but my camera is in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, HOPEFULLY still in one piece.

Along that vein, I have spent the last 24 hours contemplating this whole diet thing. I need to get some focus though. I was bombarded with how many different trends there are in weight loss. But they all basically get you to the same point. To quote my biggest brother....

"Eat less. Move more."

One could get lost in the specifics. Let's make this a little more cut and dry...and realistic?

(Hello, Jillian. We meet again.)

Part One: Eat Less
I go back and forth with the kinds of food I like. In college, I stumbled on something that really worked for me because it let me eat like a college kid. The "weigh down workshop" was based around some biblical principles that God made everything and said it was good. We shouldn't limit certain food groups, because they're made by him for us to enjoy. But just like the manna in the wilderness, we are only supposed to enjoy them in moderation. When the Hebrews collected too much manna in a day, it was rotten before the sun came up the next morning. They were only to take what was needed for the day. Or as Jesus put it, a couple millennia later, they were only supposed to take their "daily bread".

The FDA has gone to great lengths to readdress the whole pyramid thing and portion size, etc. WDW didn't take the pyramid into account. The author pretty much said eat whatever you were craving. Stop before you felt full. Remind yourself that you have 75,000 more chances to eat in your lifetime. You can have cheesecake again. No sense eating the whole thing at once. Trust God to give you the chance to have it again.

Some people read WDW, and the whole idea of trusting God enough to step back from the table enabled them to step away from other self-destructive habits. One girl used to attack herself by pulling out her own hair. Then she put her trust in God to handle whatever stresses were causing her to do this. There were before and after pictures. It was gruesome. But the point was made.

But there were some problems with this. 1.) I became very conscious of my cravings, and had learned a habit of eating whatever I was in the mood for. 2.) I married a man who loves food just as much as me. I was smaller when we met than I had been when I was in 9th grade. I even kept it off as we dated. And there was one final flushing of the fat in my system the summer before we got married. (Venezuelan cuisine and parasites will do that to you.) When we got married, food was a means of communicating love. We loved to cook for each other. We loved going to restaurants together. I lost all judgment of portion size by comparing what I ate to what he ate. I was too busy gazing into his steely blue-gray eyes to listen for my hunger signals. I didn't refer to the pyramid. And I gained. And gained. And gained....

So now what? What will get the metabolism going again? Do I just eat less of the normal food? Do I change altogether? Do I substitute meals with shakes and bars and bottles of fruity water?

I know how to fix this. It's just going to take effort. And once you've put on so much weight, and the metabolism is slow, and the gall bladder is full of sludge, and the liver thinks you've given up, well, you get lazy. Which leads me to my next point -

Part Two: Move More

Awwwww, crap!

How it all started.

When I was two years old, I had pneumonia. My mom had already had my Christmas portraits taken before I got sick. After I was better, she had them taken again. Same backdrop. Different child. Sunken eyes. Sallow complexion. Same sweet smile, but thin cheeks to replace the full jowls from the previous picture.

I looked so pitiful. I think they overcompensated. I weighed 75 pounds when I started first grade. I don't know how all the initial gain happened, being the picky eater that I was.

But, I do know how I kept all that weight on. During the bout with pneumonia, doctors discovered that I had asthma. It didn't effect me too much in the early years. I could still outrace all the boys at church. Sunday nights, we gave our parents fits in front of the church as we ran from the church steps across the front lawn to the street and back again. Several short bursts of energy. This never gave me problems with my asthma. But allergy season always did. And anytime my mother cooked shrimp in the house, I stayed outdoors until the smell left the kitchen.

Then puberty hit. I still had the allergy induced asthma, but then I started noticing my chest tightening up more often. In 9th grade, I was put on a daily inhaler, and the doctor said my asthma had developed. Exercise could also spur on an attack.

Since then, I could count on two hands the number of times I have jogged more than a mile.
(What's funny is that I'm listening to 10000 Maniacs singing "I could walk 500 miles" right now.) I have walked 500 miles or more. I love the feel of walking. I would just get bored after a while. I kept eating however I was fed during those formative years, feeding the sick child. And now I was no longer running around. I was too old to ride the yellow banana-seat bike. I was too tall for the scooter. And my skates didn't fit anymore. All the swimming I did at my aunt's pool during the summers was for naught, because we always stopped at Sonic or the snowcone stand on the drive home.

Well, the sick child is not sick anymore. I haven't had pneumonia for 3o years. And even my allergies and exercise-induced asthma have leveled off. I only take medication as I need it, rather than daily. And I only need it a couple of times a week during the spring or fall, depending on what's blooming.

Now that I have identified the starting point, maybe I can work my way spiritually, emotionally, and physically toward a healthy goal. I haven't set it yet. Since this is God's idea, I'll let him work out the details. Joe's trip to Honduras is well-timed with this revelation, because I can spend some uninterrupted time in prayer. And there'll be some fasting to empty the tank and get to where I can hear God more clearly and develop a hunger that only his word can feed.

The last time God led me to fast apart from a church-wide prayer effort, I drank milk mixed with natural honey for three days. Weird, I know. But communication with God was so....mmmm. I just don't have words for it. I don't have any natural honey, though. All I have is the little bear from Wal-Mart. And I don't actually feel led to fast for spiritual reasons. I just need to, physically.

In that time, I'll be setting some goals. And resetting the hunger+satiated meter. And seeing what else God has for me.

Huh?

I think God's telling me to go on a diet.

Forget the fact that my aunt told me for two weeks after we got my mom home from the hospital that she doesn't want me to wind up with diabetes like my mother.

And the fact that my mother is telling me the same thing.

And my brother.

Now it's God.

On the way to a district workshop this morning, I listened to a pastor on the radio talking about God's word as spiritual food. Although he didn't say this, I knew God was telling me that I take way too much pleasure in physical food, and not enough in the spiritual food that is the meat and milk and honey and bread and water of the word.

It made me want to go through my Bible and find all the places where words from God are equated with food.

I never considered myself an emotional eater, because I eat regardless of the emotion. Happy - eat. Stressed - eat. Tired - eat. Well, you get the idea. But what if.....

Happy? Sing a song of joy.
Stressed? Be still and let God reveal himself.
Tired? Take a nap! Jesus did!!
Bored? Take a walk.

I'll write more on this later.
But right now, I have to go take the frozen pizza I'm eating for lunch out of the oven.

Joanna