Today I am thankful for many things. My husband and I have been doing Whole 30 now for over 90 days. We followed the first 30 days to the letter, the second 30 days, we had one treat for my birthday. I made chocolate cupcakes with coconut flour and cashew butter frosting, really good but not compliant. The last 90 days we’ve been reintroducing foods here and there. We started with corn because we like tacos and moved on from there. So far we’ve discovered, our bodies aren’t actually too crazy about bread, rice made us tired, beans…gassy and cheese was good but we don’t miss it. We actually prefer eggs and zucchini now in the mornings instead of pancakes or waffles, they sound too heavy now, though I’m thinking on trying some pancakes made with oats next week. The best thing is I’ve gone from Size XXL back to a Size L, lost several inches everywhere along with 25lbs! Yay! We’ve decided to stay on this path because we feel so much better than we did before. We have more energy. We are enjoying lots of different types of food. We eat mostly at home now and it gives me a chance to cook more, which I have always enjoyed doing.
Food is hard. It’s attached with so many emotions and it can act as a drug when we are unhappy and want to feel better. It can be a friend when we are lonely. It can be a companion when we are happy. Food is tough. I just keep trying to remind myself that above all food should give my body the nutrients it needs to be strong, so I can be physically and mentally fit. This is important because I think God has things for me to do and I can’t do those things when I feel like crap because I ate too much bread and sugar.
Since doing Whole 30 I notice I am definitely more calm. I don’t lose my energy in the late afternoon like I used to. I am able to stay awake longer in the evening and enjoy time with my family instead of vegging on the couch.
Today I had time to make a real meal! I made Walnut Crusted Porkchops and Sweet Potatoes with Bacon :-)!
So today, for cooking, shirts that fit better, and so many many other things…I Give Thanks!
KOR
…and if you are a praying person…pray for the people in Northern California…there’s one thing that’s true about offering thoughts and prayers…thoughts are useless but prayer, prayer is powerful!
Here’s the dinner I made tonight. I really liked it, though the pork could have been a bit more moist, any hints, please feel free to advise!
Last Friday my daughter had a half day at school. Her God-Father was chosen as the Grand Marshall of our local high school Homecoming Parade and invited her to ride in the Grand Marshall car with him. She excitedly accepted. After the parade I took her to her usual swim lesson and after the swim lesson we went to the Homecoming game to watch her God-Father get his plaque and do the coin toss. Her God-Parents called her down to the field to be with them. We got to sit in the special Grand Marshall seating and her God-Parents let her have her little friend sit with her in this section. Her dad took her to the snack bar where she got a polish dog and a bag of Hot Cheetos.
At some point during the game I went to pick up the stuffed bear she brought with her and the Hot Cheetos slipped down behind the bleachers which are on a cement slant, alas the Hot Cheetos were gone. My daughter was NOT happy. The loss of the Hot Cheetos took over and that’s all she talked about until it was time to leave the game. We attempted to replace the Hot Cheetos but the snack bar had run out. This made her even more upset. So from the time we left the stadium to the time we got home all I heard about were the lost Hot Cheetos.
You can imagine I was irritated because she had had a wonderful day, a parade, swimming, homecoming game with special seats, and still it wasn’t enough. She still wanted the Hot Cheetos. I had a chat with her and reminded her about all the fun she had that day and I told her, “You get enough. Go to bed.” She was still lamenting the Hot Cheetos.
Later on during our long run the next day, my husband and I were discussing what we should do about the apparent lack of appreciation our daughter was showing. As we talked different topics came up. Our conversations while running often ramble and range from when is the next fuel break to what is coming up in the following week, this one rambled along to talking about how we were led to our daughter through the gift of adoption. The blessings we have in our lives. All the gifts we have been given. Our poor stewardship of those gifts. At one point we were talking about something we wanted, I can’t remember what it was, a trip we wanted to take or some item maybe and all of a sudden my husband yelled, “Hot Cheetos!”
Holy Moly! Hot Cheetos! I looked at him and I thought…we get enough but we still want more. Hot Cheetos! I began to wonder if we were modeling that behavior to our daughter. I haven’t decided. I don’t think so but I do know we could definitely be better stewards with the gifts God has given us. Dave Ramsey says being content is necessary to being good stewards of our material gifts. Deena Kastor in her book, Let Your Mind Run, talks about how she shaped her training and her life around thankfulness. Our pastor says we should practice being thankful to God for his gifts of creation, family and friends everyday.
So every time I catch myself being greedy and wanting more I have a phrase that pops in my head now. Hot Cheetos! I immediately try to return to a place of gratitude and contentment with what my present situation is. It doesn’t always work but its a start. You’d think someone who has a blog about being thankful would actually be thankful. Right?
For Hot Cheetos, Gods Gifts of Creation, talks during long runs with my husband that lead to realizations that I’m not really as grateful as I should be…I Give Thanks!
So….I’ve been sick and tired and now I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired…so I told my husband I needed a Life Coach but I can’t really afford a Life Coach and so I went to google and googled…Can I be my own Life Coach? The answer was Yes!
So I made a life wheel…You draw a circle with 8 spokes and you assign each spoke something that you think is important in your life… My wheel had health, spiritual, work, friends, family…I can’t remember the last three…I could look them up in my journal but right now my bedroom, where my journal is, seems so far away, anyway so next you assign a number to each spoke on a scale of 1-10 about each of these areas, after that you connect the dots. If your life is balanced then you get a circle. I didn’t get a circle. I had two areas of my life wheel that were off kilter, causing my circle to look more like a lopsided oval with a spike. The areas were health and friends. So according to this google article next you are supposed to pick on area to focus on and quite often by just focusing on one area it will often help the other areas. I picked health. That was on Friday. After you pick an area you are supposed to write down specific goals to improve this area.
Fast forward to Sunday morning and I still hadn’t written any goals but in the meantime I had talked my husband into being on my team. I explained to him what a Life Coach was and told him about my wheel. I told him I needed an accountability partner. He laughed at me as only he can but in the end he agreed to help hold me accountable. I woke up on Sunday morning knowing I needed to write some goals and I eventually came up with a list of specific goals for the week.
They were:
1)No Diet Soda or to continue not to drink diet soda.
2)Complete at least 2 cross training sessions.
3)Run at least 5 miles, which I thought was too low but my husband said gave me an easy target and an easy win for the week.
4)Eat at least 7 servings of fruits and vegetables, which I know is too low but gotta start someplace…
When I wrote or talked about writing down a goal that didn’t have to do with health my husband reminded me that I was supposed to focus on one thing, health.
So I’m three days into this new week and I can cross out 1 cross training workout, 2 miles run, and 6 fruits eaten and I have continued to stay away from diet soda.
What I noticed was having someone to be accountable to is nice. It makes me want to actually keep to my goals. I also noticed that since I had to write down my goals they are in my head and so far have helped keep me away from chocolate though not from having a Costco roll bread binge or a KFC fried chicken run…sigh…emotions got the better of me on both of those…
A teacher at a meeting told me he didn’t realize how much I ran and then said, “You never can tell by looking at someone.” Thanks buddy….promptly sent me into a KFC tailspin…sigh…
Today some friends were talking about what they were going to wear to a local dinner dance for the school our kids attend and though they had told me earlier they were wearing dresses today they told me they were wearing slacks and a nice blouse…this threw me into a turmoil and thus the Costco roll bread binge…Really do you realize how hard it is to find a nice dress that isn’t too fancy and not too plain only to be told all your efforts were wasted because now the dress you planned to wear might be too nice compared to what others are wearing? Ugh…What is casual anyway?
But you know what? I’m thankful that I did write down those goals this week because even though I let my emotions get the better of me twice this week so far I am also able to feel proud that I am half way to accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish health wise for the week…
So today I leave with this thought….It is possible to be one’s own life coach…I mean do I really need to pay a lot of money to a stranger to have them tell me that I acted out on my negative emotions with my KFC chicken attack and my bread roll folly? Not really…
I’m thankful for the husband God placed into my life, a husband that is willing to help me write goals and hold me accountable to them in a loving way. I’m thankful for a God who loves music. My husband shared a song with me this week that describes how I’ve been feeling lately and the defiance I hope to be able to show…It’s called Oh Fear…you should give it a listen….
So I’ve been a little lost lately…wandering around without a running goal and just kind of trying to get through the days…what a terrible way to live the one life we have to live…So I mean to do something about it and I’m starting or restarting with my health and I’ll see where it goes from there. I encourage anyone reading this to try out the life wheel…silly as it sounds it’s given me a place to focus…here’s to no more KFC chicken attacks or Costco roll bread binges (though since I’ve actually eaten all the bread rolls or at least the outsides of them there is really no danger of this any longer)….
I aim to make a come back…
For running, life wheels, supportive husbands, and music…I Give Thanks!
…It took me many many many years to totally understand that in the story of the prodigal son…I was the prodigal. I have spent most of my childhood and adult life agreeing with the older brother…and oh how I have seethed against Martha’s sister for sitting down and relaxing while Martha ran around making sure everyone was taken care of…so annoying….as you can see…therefore….I have absolutely no problem whatsoever seeing myself as the Pharisee…
I am soooo the Pharisee…alas and sigh. My husband and I were talking about a story in Luke the other day, the woman who washed Jesus’s feet when he was invited to lunch with the Pharisee Simon. Simon thought that if Jesus was really a prophet he would realize who this lady really was and after Jesus told her that her sins had been forgiven the other’s around the table, that would be me, started saying, “Who is this guy?”, maybe more like, “Who does this guy think he is?”
My husband pointed out something that I never really thought about. Jesus is almost always talking to the prodigal, saying, “Come home son” or to the Pharisee, “Watch your step.” It is a revelation to me this week that the prodigal has the easier time of it, I think, mostly because the Pharisee are too stupid to realize they are too stupid. I am in serious trouble here. While the prodigal just needs to ask forgiveness because they already know they are being ridiculous and that forgiveness is freely granted, the Pharisee, on the other hand, have to come to the realization that they aren’t as good as they think they are and that can take a really long time to happen, sometimes it may never happen. Have you ever thought about whether or not you were a prodigal or a Pharisee? If so which one do you think you are and why? I’m trying to think of any good Pharisee in the bible and none are coming to mind…another concern for me today. There are lots of prodigal and they are almost always redeemed, Pharisee, not so much…another long sigh…
…but since this is supposed to be a blog about being thankful I’ll pause and give thanks for a few things…
My daughter was on the sick side this weekend but thankful that it seems a mild illness and we were still able to have a little fun this morning before her fever returned. Thankful for having a treadmill because I was able to do my 9 mile run anyway, since I could not leave my daughter with my mom while my husband and I do our long run. Thankful for vanilla ice cream, sliced almonds and chocolate syrup:-)!! Oh and sunflowers! I got the most beautiful sunflowers at Whole Foods today:-) They make me happy!
I think one of the really good things about garage sales is that they force me to go through my belongings and get rid of stuff. When we have a garage sale we never keep anything that doesn’t sell. We either leave it in a box on the curb to get taken for free or we donate it to Good Will. We are not the kind of people who have a storage, if it doesn’t fit in my 1800 sq. ft. 4 bedroom house then we don’t need it…my husband on the other hand is a hoarder…so you know…conflict can arise…on occasion…
I don’t really have anyplace I’m going with this idea so I’ll just jot down a few things I’ve been thankful for this week…
-For my treadmill 🙂 Usually not a huge fan of treadmill running but the air here in the valley has been particularly bad because of the fires in our foothills. I’ve been doing my runs this week on the treadmill. I will brave the road tomorrow, hopefully the air is okay. If you’ve watched the news and or read about the Willow Fire here in CA…we are about an hour or so away from that blaze…which leads me to…
-Firefighters…so thankful for those that brave these fires in ridiculous heat and work so hard to protect, people, livestock, buildings..
-For our garage sale today…helping us to get rid of some of the clutter in our lives…we still have a lot to be sure but you know being reminded you are blessed isn’t such a terrible thing…
-Almost forgot my daughter and I baked Zucchini Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting this week! Yummy!
So for treadmills, firefighters, getting rid of clutter and cupcakes…I Give Thanks!
Thankful Runner Girl 