My Fitness Pal

You'll see down below that I'm still hovering at the point where I was a few months ago, when I hit the 50 mark, and have gone off track for a bit, as the holidays and other distractions (along with pain issues) has kept me from the gym for awhile.  Since the first of the year, I've been hit and miss, and while that's been frustrating, it hasn't been as frustrating as the disappointments that I've encountered, mostly due to my weight issues.  I had a few chances at some jobs, but none had developed, and it was mentioned to me that people really wouldn't take a serious look at someone my size.  In fact, it had been mentioned to me that this is probably the reason I'm not chosen for a lot of jobs or activities that could use the talents that I have, whether in work or ministry.

After going through the darkness of discouragement for a few days, and growing tired of staying in bed until noon, I started to look more seriously at what I was doing to tackle this monster.  Everyone had advice for me, such as eating soup all the time, or fasting two days a week (a new fad apparently), or exercising two hours a day (i.e. Biggest Loser workouts), or one of these other new diets that come along and are featured on the morning talk shows, the same one that features topics like Al Roker pooping his pants at the White House.

One of things I decided to do was go back to choir and rehearse on Wednesday evenings.  The week before, I stopped by our music ministry office and talked to my friend who works in the department to see about just showing up on Wednesdays even though I'm unable to stand for any length of time on Sundays.  When I saw her (I hadn't seen her in awhile) she looked fantastic, and I asked her what she had been up to.  I knew she was doing some bike riding, and I wondered if that was it.  To my surprise, she said all she did was count calories.

Duh.  That's a new one.  But an easy one.

So, with the help of technology and good old fashion goal setting, I once again started on my journey, this time of exercise and counting calories (to the exact calorie).  Since the beginning of April, I have lost 9 pounds and it's been easy.  A few months earlier, I downloaded a "MyFitnessPal" app onto my phone, which enables me to keep a running log of my meals and calorie limit for the day.  So far, I'm limited to 2720 calories a day, which is quite generous and will allow me to lose 2 pounds a week if I do nothing but stick to the daily limit.  My target is 2000 calories for the day, but 2500 calories if I goof up.

And I have goofed up already.  But it works.

I make sure I back it up with exercise, and so I've been hitting the pool daily so far.  The weekends are free for me to take it easy from working out, as the pool at my gym is open for families and it's difficult to swim laps when water weenies and Styrofoam dumbbells are being thrown by unruly children who have parents without stones when it comes to disciplining them.  But I'll try something different on the weekends or just take a break altogether.

So I continue on with the journey...it's a long trip, one that I started about 20 months ago taking three steps forward and two steps back, but now I'm more inclined to take a few more steps forward than backward.  Ultimately I'll make it.

MyFitnessPal