Discipline Helps

I have to say it's been pretty simple so far this month.  So far I'm down 13 pounds since I started at the first of this month (April).  Unfortunately I'm having to lost back 13 of 19 pounds that I regained when I was off my exercise regimen.  Last fall, I was able to get down to under 450 pounds, all the way to 447 pounds, which was the 50-pound mark for me.  

Just to recap, I started in June 2011 at 500 pounds (at least); by working on my diet for a month before being talked into a gym membership.  I was off to a good start, then regressed due to injury.  I was down to about 460 pounds when I first injured myself, but I was fortunately able to maintain that weight for the nine months I was down.  When I started back again in July 2012 (a year after originally starting) I found myself having difficulty with the treadmill due to pain, so I started working out in the pool.  It's helped a lot, but it hasn't done much in relieving the pain.  I took some time off in the end of 2012, and was hit and miss until March, when I started getting more consistent.  During that time I hit that 50-pound mark and dropped down to 447 pounds; however, I gained back 19 of those pounds and wound up at 466 pounds at the end of March.   

I became more dedicated this month, watching calories and being faithful in getting exercise.  It's helped.
My goal is 22 pounds for the month; that'll put me at 444 pounds.  I'm 9 pounds away as I write this, and I'm confident that I'll reach it.

Here is a heads-up on some goal-setting that I'm doing, and my putting the numbers in perspective:

For April (as mentioned) my goal is 22 pounds, which will put me at 444 pounds, which is the lowest I've been in at least six years, when I was down to 442 pounds.  

For May, My goal is 23 pounds, which will put me at 419 pounds, the lowest I've been since 2001, when I was down to 415 pounds.  

For June, my goal is 20 pounds, which will put me at 399 pounds.  What makes this goal special is that my 18-year-old daughter, Kellie, has never known me to be less than 400 pounds.  So, this goal is for her, and it's emotional for me, even as I write this.  By the way, it'll also mark 100 pounds since I began.  Two years and 100 pounds.  Not a bad result.        

For July, my goal is 23 pounds, which will put me at 376 pounds, which is where I'll need to be to be able to take classes in the fall (I'll need to be able to move around between classes and sit in a desk).  

And for August, my goal is 22 pounds, and that will put me at 355 pounds.  This goal is for my oldest daughter.  My 22-year-old daughter, Lindsey, has never known me below 360 pounds.  Plus, this goal will put me near the 150-pound mark since starting, but, more importantly 100 pounds lost since I became dedicated to this in April.  It seems like a lot, but it's really simple to lose this much weight in such a short time span, especially weighing as much as I do. 

I have goals for the last four months of the year, but I'll wait until the summer to see what's realistic at that time, as rapid weight loss doesn't happen for a prolonged period of time.  

I credit four things which have helped:

1.  Desire.  I was tired of feeling this way once and for all.
2.  Simplicity.  Calorie counting is easy with the right tools.
3.  Understanding.  Through documenting all that I eat, I can see how easy it is to eat too many calories.
4.  MyFitnessPal.  My phone app which has really allowed me to keep track of what I'm doing.  

So, I write these down and put myself out there in the open for all to see.  Maybe I can inspire someone.   

MyFitnessPal

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

Consolidation!

In blogging, I got off to such a good start, but as time goes on, other things tend to take priority, so I take this time to get back on purpose.  I will be compiling "lessons" as I go through the day or week, and will continue to make regular postings on what I'm discovering as I move through this journey.  I'm finding it difficult to categorize everything and finding the time to cover it all.  I've come to realize that a good blog is going to capture one thing, which is the essence (good word, huh?) of what the author is all about.

So, I'm sort of moving aside (although I haven't discarded it) the Plain Brown Rapper moniker, and keeping it more in line with me and who I am, John Flores.  I can only wear one hat...well four, if you count my favorite sports teams, but one when it comes to blogging.

It's very easy to get down on myself and become my most "mentally vocal" critic, but that is exactly the time when I need to get up and keep moving on.  That, or eat donuts.  Personally, I prefer eating donuts, but that won't work very well for my future.

So I'm combining the personal, professional, spiritual, nutritional, and all the other "als" into my PBR blog, which will include my Company Si blogs, my devotional material, weight loss, insights for living, recipes for ice cubes, donuts, and pictures of my dog on this blog.  There are so many how-to blogs, but there's only one blog site that can only talk about what it's like to be ME.  The jury is still out on whether that's such a good thing, but it'll help keep the stress down.  Although, it's not the stress that'll kill us, but how we react to the stress.  See, we learned something already!

Have a great day!

John

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Stepping In and Stepping Out

A few weeks ago, late in the morning, my friend gave me a call.  Actually, he called me and then I called him back.  I had my phone off and was in bed feeling sorry for myself when he called.  I wanted to stay in bed all day.  It was that kind of day.

He was calling to see if I was okay.  I sent him a text the night before.  I was tangling with a very disappointing situation and I was a bit overwhelmed at the time I sent him the text.  Usually, when I'm dealing with a crisis, I'll text a few friends and ask them to pray for me.  It's not easy to do, because I tend to question my own personal strength during those times.

Anyway, I called him back and during our conversation, my friend said it best:

"Sometimes we go through stuff; sometimes we just step in it."

And sometimes I just keep stepping in it, and it smells.

But each day is a new day, and with it comes other challenges and victories.  I'm guessing it'll be more of a challenge, but I'm up for it.

Since then, not much really has changed.

While it would appear on the surface that God continues to not answer me, He actually does.  He gives me a lot of answers to a lot of questions that I don't remember asking.  Ever feel like that?

Yet, the BIG question seems to remain unanswered.

It's just that His timing is not mine.  However, I couldn't really say that a few days ago.

The other day, I was talking to another friend, a different friend, who is going through a tough time.  I said, "You know, God may not answer my prayers, but I know He'll answer yours."  I couldn't believe I blurted that out, but that's what I had come to believe.  In fact, at my men's bible study, I shared that and I never saw so many "I can't believe you said that!" looks in one place.

But that's how I felt...at the time.

But, I've learned a few things, though, and it's funny how God answers my questions:

So what did He say?

Well, if I trust Him, I'll have joy.  Duh...heard that before.

If I'm patient, I will lack nothing.  Yeah, okay...bible bullet.

Patience is not about getting beat up while the trials hit you.  Yeah...easy for you to say.

Patience is all about how to act while waiting for God's deliverance....

Huh?

Patience is all about how to act while waiting for God's deliverance.  

Didn't see that coming.

And I then found out that patience is also a fruit that grows and develops under trial.  It also grows when the stuff you step in gets thrown on top of you.  Sometimes that stuff accelerates the growth of that fruit, but the best part is that fruit, when fully grown, doesn't taste like the manure that was used to fertilize it. It's a wonderful end result.  Eat an orange and tell me otherwise.

How do I develop patience?  Fortunately, I don't have to get doodoo all over me.  I can gain it through trust.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking.  "I need trust and then I'll have patience, but I need patience to have peace, and peace to have trust, and blah, blah, blah..."

It's like a spiritual double-dutch jump-rope.  You just don't know where to start and when to jump, and then you just go full-board, and your legs get welts from the rope beating that you receive.  

I know the feeling...I lived in the 'hood as a kid.  Double-dutch was a championship event in my neighborhood.

Jumping rope is a process.  First you start with a short one, by yourself, then you trust two people to hold a longer one on each end while you jump and hopefully they won't whip it around at 500 rpm and try to kill you.  Then with a little practice (and timing) you can do to the two-rope thing.

Peace is like that short rope that we start with by ourselves.  We actually have peace within us because Jesus left it with us; it was His peace that He gave us.  He actually said it: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."  Peace is not acquired through our money, stuff, resources, talents, friends, social connections, number of friends on Facebook, et cetera.  It's through trust and patience (more on that in a bit).  But He also tells us to not LET our hearts be troubled, and to NOT be afraid.  The Amplified Bible says to stop allowing ourselves to be agitated and disturbed, and to not allow ourselves to be fearful, intimidated, cowardly, or unsettled.

How do we become agitated and disturbed, and to not allow ourselves to be fearful, intimidated, cowardly, or unsettled?  Through that wonderful gift we're born with, the gift of reason, and we use that gift of reason to try to figure out why things are happening to us.  We frustrate ourselves over the why rather than focus on the Who.  So, one thing I can do to help myself is to give up reasoning, which destroys my trust, and disrupts the growth of my patience, allowing no peace in my life.  We also aggravate ourselves through our destructive habits, relationships, financial decisions, life decisions, and anything else we cling on to to maintain control of our lives.  So, I have to ask:  With you in control, how are you doing with your life?

So by giving up reasoning, which is what I can do, kind of like jumping rope by myself, I can now have a little peace, a little success.  I can then trust God and Jesus to hold onto the longer ropes and let them start spinning that rope, and that's where trust comes in.  I'm trusting that they will not beat my legs into submission.  Once I get in a rhythm, and start moving, they will add the next rope, which is patience, how I act in a time of peace and trust.  If you have total trust in the people holding the rope, you can skip to your heart's content.  

And if you've ever mastered double-dutch, you can't help but smile...because you're GOOD at it, and you're not coming home with bruises on your legs!

We all have a little bit of skill to jump a rope, some better than others, mind you, but we all have some. We all have some peace, some more than others, but we all have some.  That's all we need to bring to the playground.  God, through Christ, can do the rest.

But do you see the cycle?  More trust, more patience, more PEACE, then more trust, more patience, and more peace...et cetera.  All now you're just stepping out instead of stepping in it...

Since I can't jump rope anymore (at least right now), I can joyfully submit to whatever God is doing.  I can wait patiently for God and say that God has a plan, God has a timing, and God has a wonderful, unique, one-of-a-kind plan for my life.

And while God does His thing, He has given me a full-time job, a spiritual job.  As God works in the natural, I can work in the Spirit.  There's a lot I can do.  And I don't mean busy work.  Let someone else manage the church bake sale.

Pray.
Study.
Thank God that He's working in my life.
Agree that His timing is perfect and He will do the absolute right thing.
Keep my words in line with God’s word.

And until then, help someone else get their breakthrough.  Many times God will give us the anointing to help others while He works on our behalf.

God, it's Your plan, Your will, Your way, Your timing, and in the meantime, I am going to skip through life!

One final note:  Psalm 106 talks about how the Israelites kept whining to God about what they didn’t have.  So He gave them what they requested and slowly thinned them out with disease.  God will sometimes answer your prayer just to show you what you don’t want.  Keep that in mind when you pray to win the lottery.

Don't Call Me Al

I'm even more committed to bypassing the bypass, as I've heard of so many problems with the recovery process.  And today, thanks to Al Roker, I'm more committed than ever.

This morning as I was sitting at the dining table eating breakfast, and listening to one of the morning talk shows on television, I was thinking about how a lot of the features are kind of fluff pieces with little substance, such as where to vacation inexpensively (most people can't afford the "inexpensive" vacation they talk about), or how some celebrity lost weight (with the help of her personal chef).  But it does beat listening to negative the junk that we're exposed to relentlessly, if we chose to do so.  

While eating and flipping through the channels, I stopped on NBC and listened to the latest TMI segment, this time featuring Al Roker discussing the pitfalls of gastric bypass surgery and not eating the right foods afterwards.  After eating an unhealthy dinner one night, he found himself in an embarrassing situation the next day while working on a feature at the White House.  Thinking he was alone, he decided to pass some gas, and ended up sharting himself, which is a physical combination of passing gas, and, well, you know...

He then went on to share how he ran to the bathroom, tossed his underwear in the trash and went commando the rest of the day.

So much for enjoying my breakfast.

Just for the record, I love Al Roker.  He's one of my favorite personalities on television, and it did take guts to tell that story because there are a lot of people out there who are experiencing the same problem, and while I am making light of his story, just remember that we are not alone in our circumstances.

I was able to finish my breakfast through a couple of more features, and then the host introduced the next guest  - a psychologist who had "The Answer" to why people eat so much.  I calculated quickly that she must have been the 7,596th guest on that show who has "The Answer."

To her credit, she did lose 85 pounds, and so it piqued my interest.

As I tuned into what the psychologist had to say, she spoke of taking what was called the "Apple Test" for hunger, which is to ask yourself if an apple (or anything you like that's good for you to eat) would satisfy you for that moment . A lot of times kids will complain to their moms that they're hungry and mom will say to eat an apple or banana, and the kid will say, "never mind," which shows that the kid was not really hungry, but bored.

So, if I were to say "yes" to the Apple Test, then I'm to go ahead and eat the apple.

The second thing she said was to apply the FLAB test to my hunger, to me to ask myself if I want to eat because I'm:

Frustrated
Lonely
Anxious
Bored

If any of those criteria met the hunger test, then I was to once again apply the Apple Test and go from there.

Sounds like a good plan.

Oh, and she said to take time to enjoy dessert from time to time.  That was good too.

In the meantime, I posted the Al Roker video on my Facebook page because I thought it was humorous, but when I watched it once again, Al made a comment about his dilemma, which resonated with me.

He said, "It told me that I've got to be very vigilant as to what I eat."

Good advice, and it definitely beats sharting in public.  But if it happens, you can call me Al.

Merry Christmas

I'm glad I went tonight...

Though I wasn't feeling festive, I got out of the house tonight to do our annual get-together with friends and family (my brothers live next door, so it's a two-for-one shot). It wasn't personal. I just didn't feel like going, mostly because I tend to get down during the Christmases where I'm going through a time of personal struggle. It's just difficult some years. But, my wife committed us to go, and I didn't want to make her go alone. She already attended the Christmas program at my church the night before without me for the same reason (I stayed home to watch my 49ers get thrashed on television - major fail).

But, I overdid it on the food and drink - mostly food (I had some awesome cheesecake tonight), and I needed something to do in order to keep me from hitting the hay earlier than necessary, in order to avoid a Pepto-Bismol moment as a result of assuming the supine position too quickly. I figured I'd do something productive....like this.

So, it's reflection time...

For many, Christmas is a tough time, particularly if the year has been a struggle. My battle has been about health and making a living. Throughout this year, we had relied on God for our provision, and while we fell a bit short each month, we hung in there. We believed it was only a matter of time before the floodgate of blessings would open. Sad to say, the floodgate hasn't opened - well, sad in the proverbial sense. It's a work in progress, as the floodgate hasn't opened YET. It is what it is, and it could always be worse.

We all know of families that are splitting up, friends with illnesses, people with failing businesses, parents with kid problems, and on and on...including 27 families in Connecticut who are suffering this Christmas, and Christmas will never be the same for them again.

This is not to compare ourselves with those who have it worse off. I don't like to compare myself with anyone, better or worse, because the struggle I have is my own. Our struggles are just that...our own struggles. I would just suggest that we should take the time and evaluate our struggle for what it's worth...you'll find it's not so bad sometimes and it'll allow you to pray for and think more clearly about a solution.

Years ago, I worked with a lady who approached me at work via email (even though she worked 20 feet away), telling me that she wanted me to keep the happy holiday talk down because of the depression that sets in with her during this time of year. Now, this was a person who enjoyed working where she worked, lived in a lovely new home, was debt-free, happily married, with wonderful kids and grandchildren, took a nice vacation trip every year, which is the stuff that a lot of us hope for. She didn't like Christmas because it just made her blue.  

My response:  "Get over it.  A lot of us have it worse than you."  

And that blew any chance of happiness in that person's life over the next few weeks.  Ho ho ho.

So, what's my point?  It's this:  

When God answers my prayers with a resounding "no," He still loves me.

When I think that people are judging me because of my situation, there are friends that love me.

When I have family driving me nuts, I have two brothers that love me, who do their best to make their big brother laugh during the dark times, like tonight, and I don't know what I'd do without them.  The story my brother David shared this evening about a mouse in the house was epic.

When I feel that there is a growing distance between me and my kids, I know they love me. More often than not, they'll do something or say something to remind me why they're special and why I love them.

When my wife comes over to me while I sit at my desk and hugs me, "because I just love you," that's all I need to keep me going.  It's even better when I tell her "I don't need presents, and I don't need Christmas dinner...all I need is you."  That tends to make everyone happy, happy, happy...

So this year, we won't be buying presents, and this year we won't be having a Christmas dinner...but this year we still have each other, and that's all right with me.

By the way, if on Wednesday (the 26th) you need to complain about returning your presents, don't email me about it....just read the red line above.  

Merry Christmas...and one other thing...

Thank You, Jesus, for coming to this earth to be our Light and our Eternal Hope.  Amen.

Up The Hill

Just a real quick post...

I went up to a friend's cabin up in the mountains,about an hour north of here.  After a time of eating and fellowship, it came time for a time of worship and prayer at an outdoor chapel 100 yards up the hill.

I made it up the hill.

Ten months ago I couldn't say that because I was laid up in bed, unable to make it to the next room.

There are just some things that we take for granted that we should be grateful for.

Me and my friend of 22 years, Tim (left), attempting to scare away bears