My first commitment was to be at 209 by February 5th which is this coming Sunday. Last Friday morning, I was at 210.5 and really pumped. I figured that last 1.5 pounds would come off quick and I could get an early start on my next commitment.

Well, apparently God had a different plan. After a typical day of eating on Friday, my weight inexplicably jumped to 213. I was dumbfounded and my first reaction was anger. I quickly reminded myself of God’s faithfulness to me and had no business being upset. I also have to keep reminding myself that I can only do my part, the rest is up to God and what he determines is the best for me. So, perhaps God again is using this as a teaching moment for me.

So today, I sit at 210.5 again with three days before February 5th. A pound and a half would be hard, if not impossible, for me to lose on my own. However, it is not beyond God. I am committed to doing my part. That is all I can do. We will see what God decides.

As far as my running is going, I have once again built back up to running the full 5k. It is a great feeling to be back. God has definitely blessed me with this. I plan to just keep going with the 5k three times a week. My hope is to build myself up so it becomes easier and my times get better.

As a reminder, here is what I have committed to…

I will be back to 209 (from 215.5) by February 5th, 2011.

After that, I am committing to being back to 200 by May 5th. That is three months to lose another 9 pounds.

As of today, about halfway through the first commitment, I am at 212.5. Down three pounds.

The last two weeks, I have done really, really well on my eating. I expected the weight to just fall off. However, that has not been the case. Many mornings I stepped on the scale and felt frustrated. However, last night I had a realization, I am doing everything I can do, the rest is up to God.

After that, I felt okay and at peace. Then, what do you know, this morning I had lost half the weight I need to for the first commitment. Right on schedule.

God is good.

The holidays are over.

No more excuses.

It is time to be a loser again.

The holidays were not kind to my weight. I had hoped to maintain around 212, but I was at 215.5 this morning.

I just spent some time talking with God to decide what my next weight loss commitment should be. Here is what I got…

• It took about a month of bad eating to get from 209 to 215, so I will be taking a month to lose it. I will be back to 209 by February 5th, 2011.
• After that, I am committing to being back to 200 by May 5th. That is three months to lose another 9 pounds.

While I do feel like I have made these commitments with God’s blessing, I am still a little nervous. My last commitment did not work out. I failed. I do not want that to happen again. To help, I am recommitting to posting on this blog every two weeks. I have dropped that ball a lot lately.

As far as running, I have been running now for a few weeks. My oldest son Stephen has been going with me. Last night we ran 9 minutes, walked two, then ran 10. We are both working our way up to running 5k. The knee is still feeling good.

Go time!

Last Thursday, I decided to give running a try for the first time since my knee injury. My knee had been feeling pretty good. Did not have any pain while walking and also tried a few very short jogs on it also without problems. I decided my first run would be on a treadmill. If something did go wrong, I wanted hand rails there to catch me.

The run went real well. In fact, it went great. After two months of not running, I went a full 30 minutes without stopping.

So I was pretty pumped to get back out on the road and went to run last Sunday night. It was bad. My knee was fine, but I barely made it a mile without having to walk. It really highlighted to me how much easier it is to run on a treadmill than out on the streets of my neighborhood. I only went around 1.6 miles and I had to walk a couple of times.

So I am blessed that my knee is feeling good. I am not so pumped that I am going to have to start over in building up to my 5k endurance again. On top of that, we have the holidays, which is not going to be nice to my weight.

Concerning my weight, when I hurt my knee I was at 209. I am now hovering around 212. If I can make it through the holidays right there, it will be victory. Then with the new year can come a new commitment to weight loss and getting back to running 5k.

Last Saturday, I hyperextended my knee while playing football at our 5th & 6th grade retreat. Actually, it was ultimate football which is the same as ultimate frisbee, just with a football. I was in a lot of pain when it happened, but since then, it has not been too bad.

I have been really bummed about it. I have never really had an injury like this. Here are some things that went through my head as I was thinking about it…

• I just got built back up to running 5k non-stop. Now I am going to have to stop running for who know how long and I will be back to where I started. I don’t like running, however, I don’t like not running.
• Getting around is going to be a real pain.
• We were suppose to go camping at the Canyon for Michael’s birthday the next Friday night, I doubt I will be able to do that.
• Do I go to the doctor? It does not hurt real bad. We have a high deductible insurance plan so a doctor visit can get real expensive, real quick.
• If I don’t go to the doctor, how will I know when it is okay to run again?
• Even after my knee heals, will I ever be the same? Will I go out at a retreat and play football, or will I think that it is just not worth the risk? Am I going to be scared about this for the rest of my life?

By Sunday night, I was really down because of this list. Monday morning I decided I had to go to a doctor and got an appointment for Wednesday.

As it turns out, the doc suspects that I have a strained PCL ligament. He said most of the time this heals on its own and does not require surgery. That is good news. However, most of my list above is still not addressed. Hopefully more will be address when I go back in two weeks.

My other issue is that I have used this injury as an excuse for eating badly. So not only am I know less active because of the injury, I am eating more calories than normal and that is the recipe for weight gain. I plan to fix this real soon.

So that is where I am at. I have told myself numerous times that God has something to teach me through this injury. If I figure out what that is, I will let you know.

I have been back to running three times a week for several weeks now. I am still not up to where I was when I stopped at the beginning of the summer, but things are coming along.

Towards the end of my last two runs, I have been pushing myself a bit. The first time, the song “I Will Follow” by Chris Tomlin came on in my playlist.

Where you go, I'll go
Where you stay, I'll stay
When you move, I'll move
I will follow

 
All your ways are good
All your ways are sure
I will trust in you alone
Higher than my side
High above my life
I will trust in you alone

I then decided to imagine Jesus was running right ahead of me, and basically, I said those words to him.

Course, that introduced a problem. How do you picture Jesus running? I mean, have you ever pictured Jesus is a t-shirt, shorts and a pair of Asics? It is also difficult to picture him running in a robe and sandals. Anyway, I got over it.

So I told him, basically, if you keep running, I will keep running. If you start to walk, I will walk.

You may ask, “How exactly does that work?” It is me creating a mental picture of something. Don’t I have control over if he walks or not?

My answer is only this, I don’t know. The first night, I did this towards the end of my run and it helped me make it to the end running. The second night, I started it about mid way through and I did walk some. I really cannot explain how it helped me, but it did. I guess maybe with Jesus right there, if I was going to stop running and walk, HE would have to be convinced I needed to. It would not just be me thinking I was tired enough to walk.

This may not make a lot of sense, but oh well. It’s my blog, I’ll write what I want.

A couple of posts ago, I made a goal of being at 203 by August 31st. As you might have figured from the title, I did not make it. In fact, since the beginning of August, I have not lost much of anything. My lowest weight has been 207.

The reason? Well, first and foremost, I was not consistent enough. I made too many compromises this past month. Gave in to temptations too many times. However, even when I did put together a week or more of good days, the weight just did not want to come off.

I have been pondering what I should do now. I think I have decided to give up.

Okay, not give up on the weight loss, but on setting a timetable. If you have read my past posts, I am pretty convinced that if I do not have a timetable in front of me, I will not lose. However, I want to try again. Mostly because I am weary of the deadline.

So I am not going off the deep end and having a box of donuts for breakfast everyday. I am simply going to keep working, one day at a time, to lose weight. History will say that I will be back on here in a couple of weeks setting a deadline, but for now, I will not.

I still have not started running again. Next week is FINALLY suppose to be a bit cooler so it is looking good to start back up. That could also help things along.

This question popped into my head the other day. After thinking a while, I don’t ever remember myself answering this question. So, I thought I would give it a shot now.

1. First thing that came to mind is “Why not?” Yeah, I answered a question with a question. But it’s true, why not believe in God? Are their any negatives? If I did not believe in God, is there really any way that my life would be better? I can’t think of anything.

2. It just makes sense to me. Some say that all creation just happened? I think that takes more faith than to believe in God the creator.

3. I believe the best possible life is a life of believing in God. Kinda like my first reason, I cannot imagine life being better not believing. Loving God and loving others. There is no better life than that.

4. I have seen evidence. Of course, even the evidence I have seen requires faith. Lives changed, lives saved, miracles, answered prayer. A non believer could say it was all coincidence. I choose to believe otherwise.

That is all I can think of right now.

So tell me, why do you believe in God?

After a week of vacation, then a couple of weeks of sorta dieting, then another three days at a conference, I am now back on the wagon of weight loss.

While I was out-of-town, there was no watching what I ate. Not the least bit. I left for vacation at 203.5 and I came back around 212. Yup, 9 pounds in less than a month. Am I talented or what? I am an eating machine.

Now that my traveling is over, I am focused and ready to get it all off. I have had several excellent days so far and will have many, many more to come. As of today, I am already back at 208.5.

As I know from experience, I need a goal to commit to. After careful prayer and consideration, my first goal is to be back to 203 by the August 31st.

As far as running, I have not run since the end of June. I will begin running again but I am going to wait till it cools off some. Right now we are still in the 90’s at 9:00pm so I am going to wait. It is hard enough to get started again. I do not want to try it with the heat.

I was pretty severely overweight for many, many years. Mostly because of that, I did not like having a picture taken of me. I hated the way I looked and did not want to see myself in print. Because of that, I do not have too many pictures of myself, but there are some.

Every time I see one of these pictures I cringe. To be quite honest, I feel shame. Even though I am not near the size I used to be anymore, I feel shame over those pictures.

I am trying to figure out why that is. I mean, I am not that person anymore. I am certainly not at the weight I would like to be, but I would not consider myself severely overweight anymore. So why would seeing those old pictures, and the thought of others seeing those pictures bother me? I dunno. You would think it would be something I would be proud of to show how far I have come. I guess it is the same kind of shame that other people deal with when they have things in their past they do not want to share.

I will need to overcome this. I am a living testimony to what God can do. I could never have lost all that weight without the power of God. It is part of my testimony and it can help others.

I have a picture my sister-in-law gave me. Not sure when it was taken, but it it fairly old. Probably from the early 90’s. I am very big. I was probably close to 300 pounds. I carry the picture in my backpack and pull it out every now and then to look at it. I don’t like it. I don’t wanna share it, but I am going to today. Here it is…

And here is a picture I just took of myself. I hope the differences are obvious (besides more age and less hair!).

I still have a long way to go.I would really like to be at 180. This morning I was at 204. By the way, in my last post I made a commitment to be at 205 by June 28th. With God’s help, I have done that.

Hopefully, what God has done to change my body over the years can be a testimony to others. If you would like to read about my weight loss journey, just click on that category in the right hand column. It lists in reverse order, so if you want to start from the beginning, here is the post.