Dieting

Do the calories count if I snack on chocolate while I'm making a salad? 

I've been having a lot of issues with my weight lately. Yes, I know I'm not over weight. My weight has just been redistributed in the past few years and I'm not a fan of redistribution (of weight or wealth). At the beginning of the summer, I couldn't button a pair of shorts that I bought last year. 

Rachel's baby is only five weeks old and she's working hard on her weight and already gotten back into her jeans. Recently, at the grocery store, Rachel and I saw a new mother with a baby younger than Rachel's but the mom had obviously gotten back into her regular clothes quickly and beautifully. Rachel noticed her too. I told her that there will always be someone skinnier, shapelier, healthier, stronger, ... you get the idea. We have to do the best we can with what we have. We have to honor God with our own bodies.

I'm never going to be a body builder, elite runner or super model nor do I want to. I just have to take the body God gave me and use it for His glory. I know that when I'm eighty years old, I will probably have some health issues. If I do what's right with my body now, those issues may not be as severe. I don't want my children to have extra burdens then because I didn't have self control or was lazy now.

I'm not a heavy eater, but I do like food, especially chocolate. If I don't practice self control while I'm eating, I'm not glorifying God. I don't usually consider myself to be a lazy person, but when it comes to exercise I might be. It's much easier to sleep thirty minutes longer than to get up and walk. 

I heard of a study that found for women over forty they have to do sixty minutes of cardio exercise a day to maintain their weight if they still eat the same amount of food that they ate before they were forty. I don't have sixty minutes a day every day of the week to exercise, I don't have any day of the week that I have sixty minutes to exercise. Since the episode with my shorts at the beginning of the summer, my goal has been the normal thirty minutes at least three times a week. Some weeks, I've done a little more, some a little less. 

I've always known that I wouldn't be able to maintain eating the same amount that I've always eaten. Haven't you ever heard anyone say, "Enjoy it now, you won't be able to eat like that forever."? There was a time when I could have had one of Natalie's delicious orange muffins and Kelly's cinnamon rolls for breakfast, but not anymore, 
today I have to choose.  I have even cut out eating chocolate every day (gasp). 

Now writing a post like this could have some negative ramifications. Please, just know my heart. I want to glorify God with my body, not condemn others. In the past few weeks, two different people have told me that they had gained fifty pounds that they want to loose. I was shocked, because I don't notice things like that. Honestly, I'm too distracted to notice or examine other's weight issues or judge them about that. 

So tomorrow, I'll wake up, exercise, eat a cinnamon roll (I ate the orange muffin today) and put on the shorts that I couldn't button several weeks ago.